War Poetry: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

The Soldier 

Rupert Brooke, 1887 – 1915

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.