The Soldier (1914) by Rupert Brooke

From Poems That Make Grown Men Cry, an anthology by Anthony and Ben Holden.

The Soldier (1914)

by Rupert Brooke

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.

The Solder was recommended by the actor Hugh Bonneville.

Like many school children, I was introduced to this sonnet when studying the poets of the First World War. The graphic bitterness of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, we were instructed, was to be contrasted with the naïve patriotism of Rupert Brooke.

Brooks view of death and his love of country is that of a clear-eyed young man who, like the hundreds of thousands of others who rushed to join up, felt confident of purpose and a victory within months, entirely innocent of what was to come. I won't judge him for that.

Every time I watch the movie Gladiator this poem comes to mind. Like the recurring motif of Maximus's and brushing the wheat of his fields as he heads for his waiting family, "The Soldier" for me, is ultimately about belonging. It's about coming home.

And it’s not the notion of death with honor or pride in mother­land that moves me, it’s the simple phrase “laughter, learnt of friends” that gets me every time. An image of happiness shared, in a land at peace.