The Soldier (poem)

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.

"The Soldier" is a poem written by Rupert Brooke. It is the fifth and final sonnet in the sequence 1914, published posthumously in 1915 in the collection 1914 and Other Poems.

The manuscript is located at King's College, Cambridge.[1]

Structure of the poem

Written with fourteen lines in a Petrarchan sonnet form, the poem is divided into an opening octet, and then followed by a concluding sestet. The octet is rhymed after Shakespearean sonnets (ABAB CDCD), while the sestet follows rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnets (EFG EFG).

This sonnet encompasses the memoirs of a deceased soldier who declares his patriotism to his homeland by declaring that his sacrifice will be the eternal ownership of England of the small portion of land where his body is buried. The poem appears not to follow the normal purpose of a Petrarchan sonnet either. It does not go truly into detail about a predicament or resolution, as is customary with this form; rather, the atmosphere remains constantly in the blissful state of the English soldier.

Cultural influence

Prior to the first Moon landing in 1969, William Safire prepared a speech for Richard Nixon to give in case of disaster. The last line of the prepared address echoes the second and third lines of the poem.[2][3] The same lines were also used in the lyrics of Pink Floyd's "The Gunner's Dream" (1983, on The Final Cut)[4] and Al Stewart's "Somewhere in England 1915" (2005, on A Beach Full of Shells).

The poem is read in its entirety in films Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) and All the King's Men (1999).

References

  1. ^ Jones, Peter Murray (2016). "Rupert Brooke and the Profits of Poetry". Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society. 16 (1): 107–123. ISSN 0068-6611.
  2. ^ Safire, William (12 July 1999). "Essay; Disaster Never Came". The New York Times. Retrieved July 20, 2014.
  3. ^ Tierney, Dominic (25 January 2012). "Doomsday Speeches: If D-Day and the Moon Landing Had Failed". The Atlantic.
  4. ^ Easlea, Daryl (21 March 2024). ""It ended up very miserable. Even Roger Waters says what a miserable period it was – and he was the one who made it entirely miserable": How Pink Floyd made The Final Cut and learned to hate each other". Prog. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
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