Friday Poetry: Rupert Brooke

Hello!

On the 11th November 1918, the fighting ceased on the Western Front, marking the end of WWI. 11th November is known today as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day.

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was a poet and a soldier who enlisted to fight. This poem was written in 1914 just as the war was about to begin.

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. 

Rupert Brooke

Happy Reading