Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier"

By Sarah C. Portner
I know we didn't read this poem in class, but I had to read it for another class and thought I would post it and discuss it here.

"The Soldier"
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever 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 and English heaven.
--1915

I like the romantic appeal Brooke has in this poem. He makes dyeing in war seem almost romantic. That somehow the country will obtain a foreign plot of land by their soldier dyeing there. I think that is an interest concept, that that foreign plot of land will somehow also obtain the ideals of the country of that fallen soldier, in this case England. What I also found ironic about this poem was that even though Brooke was enlisted to serve in the English military to fight in WW1 he died before he ever saw combat. He was never able to see the trenches or the brutality that WW1 turned out to be.