The Soldier

Poetry Index » By: Rupert Brooke (1915)

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.^[1] There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 5
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 10
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Notes and Commentary

↑ Brooke died of dysentery on a ship bound for Callipoli shortly after enlisting in the Royal Navy. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros (Abrams 1986, p. 1892).

Work Cited

Abrams, M. H., ed. (1986). The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 2 (Fifth ed.). New York: W. W. Norton.

[1] Brooke died of dysentery on a ship bound for Callipoli shortly after enlisting in the Royal Navy. He is buried on the Greek island of Skyros (Abrams 1986, p. 1892).

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