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The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

'The Soldier' is a poem by the English poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). The poem was first published in 1915 in the collection 1914 and Other Poems. Rupert Brooke was an officer in the British navy during World War I. Brooke died of blood poisoning while awaiting deployment in an allied invasion.
Black and white portrait of Rupert Brooke. He is a young man looking directly at the camera. He is wearing a white shirt, and a scarf tied as a tie.
Rupert Brooke. Image: The United Kingdom Government, The Imperial War Museum / Public domain

The Soldier

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.

Photo: Field of red poppies. A dramatic sky of grey clouds.
"That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.". Image: Rodolfo Cardarelli / CC BY-SA 4.0

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