A soldier’s duty.

A soldier’s love of country.

…

The Soldier

by Rupert Brooke

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.

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(photo by meappropriatestyle):

To honour the British soldiers who lost their lives in  WWI:

‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’

ceramic poppies art installation, Tower of London UK

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‘The Soldier’ by Rupert Brook, 1887 – 1915

is the last in a five sonnet sequence,

which he had entitled  ‘1914’.

…

His first collection of poems was published in 1911.

In 1913 he became a fellow at his alma mater King’s College, Cambridge.

At the start of WWI, he was commissioned into the Royal Naval Division.

He died on board ship, in 1915, after developing septicaemia from a

mosquito bite.

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His poems written during the initial period of the war

have an optimistic perspective, which works written by others

as the war progressed, certainly did not.

…