Soldier, The, by the English poet Rupert Brooke, is one of the most famous poems of World War I (1914-1918). It was published in the collection 1914 and Other Poems (1915) and became an immediate classic. The popularity of this nostalgic poem of home was made all the more poignant by Brooke’s death on the island of Skiros in 1915 from blood poisoning. He had been on his way to Gallipoli, Turkey, where more than 200,000 Allied soldiers eventually were killed or wounded. Although the horrors of war are not mentioned in the poem, the awareness of its terrible reality lies behind Brooke’s idyllic vision of peace.
If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, 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 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.
Brooke’s rather sentimental patriotism can seem dated today. And although his war poems brought him his earliest fame, Brooke’s later reputation has depended more on lighter pieces, such as the well-known “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester.” But his importance as a war poet to British readers, both during and after World War I, cannot be overestimated. For all the simplicity of feeling and expression, the voice of Brooke’s unnamed soldier has a universality that gives him an undisputed place in English literature.
See also English literature; World War I.
