The Soldier
Rupert Brooke, 1887 - 1915
If I should die, think only this of me:
That theres 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 Englands, 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 Soldier: Rupert Brooke - Summary and
Critical Analysis
The Soldier is a sonnet in which Brooke glorifies England during the First World War. He speaks in the
guise of an English soldier as he is leaving home to go to war. The poem represents the patriotic ideals
that characterized pre-war England. It portrays death for ones country as a noble end and England as
the noblest country for which to die.
Rupert Brooke
In the first stanza (the octave of the sonnet) stanza, he talks about how his grave will be England
herself, and what it should remind the listeners of England when they see the grave. In the second
stanza, the sestet, he talks about this death (sacrifice for England) as redemption; he will become a
pulse in the eternal mind. He concludes that only life will be the appropriate thing to give to his great
motherland in return for all the beautiful and the great things she has given to him, and made him what
he is. The soldier-speaker of the poem seeks to find redemption through sacrifice in the name of the
country.
The speaker begins by addressing the reader, and speaking to them in the imperative: think only this of
me. This sense of immediacy establishes the speakers romantic attitude towards death in duty. He
suggests that the reader should not mourn. Whichever corner of a foreign field becomes his grave; it
will also become forever England. He will have left a monument of England in a forever England. He
will have left a monument in England in a foreign land, figuratively transforming a foreign soil to
England. The suggestion that English dust must be richer represents a real attitude that the people
of the Victorian age actually had.
The speaker implies that England is mother to him. His love for England and his willingness to sacrifice
is equivalent to a sons love for his mother; but more than an ordinary son, he can give his life to her.
The imagery in the poem is typically Georgina. The Georgian poets were known for their frequent
mediations in the English countryside. Englands flowers, her ways to roam, and English air all
represent the attitude and pride of the youth of the pre-industrial England; many readers would excuse
the jingoistic them of this poem if they remember that this soldiers bravery and sense of sacrifice is far
better than the modern soldier and warfare in which there is nothing grand about killing people with
automated machine guns! The soldier also has a sense of beauty of his country that is in fact a part of
his identity. In the final line of the first stanza, nature takes on a religious significance for the speaker.
He is washed by the rivers, suggesting the purification of baptism, and blest by the sun of home. In
the second stanza, the sestet, the physical is left behind in favor of the spiritual. If the first stanza is
about the soldiers thought of this world and England, the second is about his thoughts of heaven and
England (in fact, and English heaven).
In the sestet, the soldier goes on to tell the listener what to think of him if he dies at war, but he presents
a more imaginative picture of himself. He forgets the grave in the foreign country where he might die,
and he begins to talk about how he will have transformed into an eternal spirit. This means that to die
for England is the surest way to get a salvation: as implied in the last line, he even thinks that he will
become a part of an English heaven. The heart will be transformed by death. All earthly evil will be
shed away. Once the speaker has died, his soul will give back to England everything England has given
to him- in other words, everything that the speaker has become. In the octave, the speaker describes
his future grave in some far off land as a part of England; and in the sestet England takes on the role of
a heavenly creator, a part of the eternal mind of God. In this way, dying for England gains the status of
religious salvation, wherever he dies. Wherever he dies, his death for England will be a salvation of his
soul. It is therefore the most desirable of all fates.
The images and praises of England run through both the stanzas. In the first stanza Brooke describes
the soldiers grave in a foreign land as a part of England; in the second, that actual English images
abound. The sights, sounds, dreams, laughter, friends, and gentleness that England offered him during
his life till this time are more than enough for him to thank England and satisfactorily go and die for her.
The poet elaborates on what England has granted in the second stanza; sights and sounds and all of
his dreams. A happy England filled his life with laughter and friends, and England characterized
by peace and gentleness. It is what makes English dust richer and what in the end guarantees
hearts at peace, under an English Heaven.
This is a sonnet based on the two major types of the sonnet: Petrarchan or Italian and Shakespearean
or English. Structurally, the poem follows the Petrarchan mode; but in its rhyme scheme, it is in the
Shakespearean mode. In terms of the structure of ideas, the octave presents reflection; the sestet
evaluates the reflection. The first eight lines (octave) is a reflection on the physical: the idea of the
soldiers dust buries in a foreign field. They urge the readers not to mourn this death, though they
implicitly also create a sense of loss. The last six lines (sestet), however, promise redemption: a pulse
in the eternal mind. under an English heaven. The rhyme scheme is that of the Shakespearean
sonnet: the octave and the sestet consist of three quatrains, rhyming abab cdcd efef and a final rhymed
couplet gg. As in Shakespearean sonnets, the dominant meter is iambic.
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Rupert Brooke
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rupert Brooke
Born
Rupert Chawner Brooke
3 August 1887
Rugby, Warwickshire, England
Died
23 April 1915 (aged 27)
Aegean Sea, off the island ofSkyros
Resting place
Skyros, Greece
Nationality
British
Education
Rugby School, King's College,University of
Cambridge (fellow)
Occupation
Poet
Employer
Sidgwick and Jackson (Publisher)
Known for
Poetry
Rupert Chawner Brooke (middle name sometimes given as "Chaucer";[1] 3 August 1887 23 April
1915[2]) was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War,
especially "The Soldier". He was also known for his boyish good looks, which were said to have
prompted the Irish poet W. B. Yeats to describe him as "the handsomest young man in England". [3][4]
Early life[edit]
Brooke was born at 5 Hillmorton Road, Rugby, Warwickshire,[5][6] the second of the three sons of William
Parker Brooke, a Rugby schoolmaster, and Ruth Mary Brooke, ne Cotterill. He was educated at two
independent schools in Rugby: Hillbrow School andRugby School. In 1905, he became friends with St.
John Lucas, who thereafter became something of a mentor to him. [7]
While travelling in Europe he prepared a thesis, entitled "John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama",
which won him a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of
the Cambridge Apostles, was elected as President of the Cambridge University Fabian Society, helped
found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in plays including the Cambridge Greek Play.
Life and career[edit]
A statue of Rupert Brooke in Rugby
Brooke made friends among the Bloomsbury group of writers, some of whom admired his talent while
others were more impressed by his good looks. Virginia Woolf boasted to Vita Sackville-Westof once
going skinny-dipping with Brooke in a moonlit pool when they were in Cambridge together.[8]
Brooke belonged to another literary group known as the Georgian Poets and was one of the most
important of the Dymock poets, associated with the Gloucestershire village of Dymock where he spent
some time before the war. He also lived in the Old Vicarage, Grantchester.
Brooke suffered a severe emotional crisis in 1912, caused by sexual confusion and jealousy, resulting
in the breakdown of his long relationship with Ka Cox (Katherine Laird Cox). [9] Brooke's paranoia
that Lytton Strachey had schemed to destroy his relationship with Cox by encouraging her to see Henry
Lamb precipitated his break with his Bloomsbury group friends and played a part in his nervous
collapse and subsequent rehabilitation trips to Germany.[10]
As part of his recuperation, Brooke toured the United States and Canada to write travel diaries for
the Westminster Gazette. He took the long way home, sailing across the Pacific and staying some
months in the South Seas. Much later it was revealed that he may have fathered a daughter with
a Tahitian woman named Taatamata with whom he seems to have enjoyed his most complete
emotional relationship.[11][12] Many more people were in love with him.[13] Brooke was romantically involved
with the actress Cathleen Nesbitt and was once engaged to Nol Olivier, whom he met, when she was
aged 15, at the progressive Bedales School.
Brooke was an inspiration to poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., author of the poem "High Flight". Magee
idolised Brooke and wrote a poem about him ("Sonnet to Rupert Brooke"). Magee also won the same
poetry prize at Rugby School which Brooke had won 34 years earlier.
As a war poet Brooke came to public attention in 1915 when The Times Literary Supplement quoted
two of his five sonnets ("IV: The Dead" and "V: The Soldier") in full on 11 March and his sonnet "V: The
Soldier" was read from the pulpit of St Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday (4 April). Brooke's most
famous collection of poetry, containing all five sonnets, 1914 & Other Poems, was first published in May
1915 and, in testament to his popularity, ran to 11 further impressions that year and by June 1918 had
reached its 24th impression;[14] a process undoubtedly fuelled through posthumous interest.
Death[edit]
Blow out your bugles, detail on Memorial Arch (by John M. Lyle) atRoyal Military College of Canada
Brooke's accomplished poetry gained many enthusiasts and followers and he was taken up by Edward
Marsh who brought him to the attention of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. He was
commissioned into the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a temporary Sub-Lieutenant[15] shortly after
his 27th birthday and took part in the Royal Naval Division's Antwerp expedition in October 1914. He
sailed with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on 28 February 1915 but
developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite. He died at 4:46 pm on 23 April 1915 in a French
hospital ship moored in a bay off the island of Skyros in the Aegean on his way tothe landing at
Gallipoli. As the expeditionary force had orders to depart immediately, he was buried at 11 pm in an
olive grove on Skyros, Greece.[1][2][16] The site was chosen by his close friend, William Denis Browne, who
wrote of Brooke's death:[17]
...I sat with Rupert. At 4 oclock he became weaker, and at 4.46 he died, with the sun shining all round
his cabin, and the cool sea-breeze blowing through the door and the shaded windows. No one could
have wished for a quieter or a calmer end than in that lovely bay, shielded by the mountains and
fragrant with sage and thyme.
Grave of Rupert Brooke on the Greek island of Skyros
His grave remains there today.[18] Another friendand war poetPatrick Shaw-Stewart, also played a
prominent role in Brooke's funeral.[19] On 11 November 1985, Brooke was among 16 First World War
poets commemorated on a slate monument unveiled in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.[20] The
inscription on the stone was written by a fellow war poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War,
and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."[21]
The original wooden cross that marked his grave on Skyros, which was painted and carved with his
name, was removed to Clifton Road Cemetery in Rugby, Warwickshire, to the Brooke family plot. When
a permanent memorial was made for his grave on Skyros, Rupert Brooke's mother, Mary Ruth Brooke,
had the original cross brought from Skyros to Rugby and placed at the plot. However, because of
perishing in the open air, it was removed from the cemetery in 2008, and replaced by a more
permanent marker. The original grave marker from Skyros is now at Rugby School with the memorials
of other old Rugbeians.[22]
Brooke's brother, 2nd Lt. William Alfred Cotterill Brooke, was a member of the 8th Battalion London
Regiment (Post Office Rifles) and was killed in action near Le Rutoire Farm on 14 June 1915 aged 24.
He is buried in Fosse 7 Military Cemetery (Quality Street), Mazingarbe,Pas de Calais, France. He had
only joined the battalion on 25 May.[23]
