The Soldier

Of the many poems written by enlisted men during World War I (WWI), “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke stands out especially because Brooke saw almost no combat. WWI broke out in the summer of 1914. That fall, Brooke began work on a series of “War Sonnets” and “The Soldier” is a part of this series. Brooke died the following year, on his way to Gallipoli, from sepsis. 1914 and Other Poems was published in 1915 after Brooke’s death.

“The Soldier” was originally titled “The Recruit,” and some would argue “The Recruit” is a more fitting title, because Brooke hadn’t seen any frontline combat when he wrote this sonnet. In fact, Brooke never saw any frontline combat. Although Brooke was deployed to help with the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula, he died on a hospital ship of sepsis, or blood-poisoning, before he ever got to the front mentioned in his poem. Many scholars believe Brooke would not have published this poem had he seen what modern warfare was really like. As a result, scholars and critics often classify “The Soldier” as a pre-war poem; although it was technically written shortly after WWI began, its author never witnessed the chaos, suffering, and mass death that characterized that war and has come to characterize modern warfare ever since.

As well as a sonnet, “The Soldier” is also a self-elegy and one of the last English elegies to offer readers traditional elegiac consolation. Other WWI soldier-poets, including most famously Wilfred Owen, rejected traditional consolation. In their minds, there was no comfort for the mass death of young men they witnessed during the war. Instead of offering consolation, many WWI soldier-poets strove to show a more accurate, if also more gruesome, portrayal of death.

Brooke, however, neither witnessed nor experienced the profound changes brought about by WWI. “The Soldier,” therefore, is often read and taught as an example of how people thought and felt prior to the war. Brooke’s very sincere poem “The Soldier” provides an important point of contrast to the highly ironic poems written by WWI soldier-poets who fought in the trenches.

Poet Biography

Prior to his early death at age 27, Brooke seemed to live a charmed life. He was born in 1887 in England. He went to a prestigious boarding school, Rugby, where his father was headmaster. This is the same boarding school that Victorian poet Matthew Arnold attended years before Brooke and where Arnold’s father was also headmaster.

Brooke then studied at Cambridge University. He was friends with intellectual, sophisticated literati, including writers W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence, as well as the economist John Maynard Keynes, mountaineer George Mallory, and Winston Churchill. Brooke was also extremely good looking. Yeats called him “the handsomest young man in England.”

Brooke joined the Royal Naval Division shortly after WWI began. This is also around the time Brooke began writing his series of “War Sonnets,” including “The Soldier.” Brooke only saw one day of very limited fighting in Antwerp, Belgium. In April of 1915, he we deployed to help with the invasion of Gallipoli, but he died of sepsis before he ever got to the front. Brooke died on April 23, also known as St. George’s Day, the day when England celebrates Shakespeare’s birth.

Following his death, Churchill wrote an obituary for Brooke. This obit begins:

Rupert Brooke is dead. A telegram from the Admiral at Lemnos tells us that this life has closed at the moment when it seemed to have reached its springtime. A voice had become audible, a note had been struck, more true, more thrilling, more able to do justice to the nobility of our youth in arms engaged in this present war, than any other more able to express their thoughts of self-surrender, and with a power to carry comfort to those who watch them so intently from afar. The voice has been swiftly stilled. Only the echoes and the memory remain; but they will linger (Churchill, Winston. “Rupert Brooke: Obituary.” The First World War Digital Poetry Archive).

Brooke was also remembered on Easter Sunday 1915, when his sonnet “The Soldier” was read from the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Finally, his collection of “War Sonnets,” 1914 and Other Poems, was published posthumously.

Poem Text

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.

Brooke, Rupert. “The Soldier.” 1915. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“The Soldier” begins with the speaker, a soldier, positing that he might die during WWI; if he dies, the speaker instructs his readers not to mourn. Instead of being sad, the soldier-speaker counsels readers to remember that England lives on: “If I should die, think only this of me: / That there’s some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England” (Lines 1-3).

In other words, if the speaker dies, the small part of the battlefield where he perishes will be marked “for ever” (Line 3) for his country, England.

The speaker continues by positing that death will turn him to “dust,” but this “dust” will be “richer” than the dirt of the foreign battlefield where he died, because it will be English dust: “…There shall be / In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; / A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware” (Lines 3-5).

The speaker then remembers how he grew up in England and how his homeland gave him “her flowers to love, her ways to roam” (Line 6). This pastoral British childhood made the speaker “[a] body of England’s, breathing English air, / [w]ashed by the rivers, blest by suns of home” (Lines 7-8).

In the second stanza, the soldier-speaker continues to advise readers how to mentally cope with his death: “And think, this heart, all evil shed away, / A pulse in the eternal mind, no less / Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given” (Lines 9-11). If the speaker dies in war, he contends, his heart will be purified and will beat on as “[a] pulse in the eternal mind” (Line 10). Yet even in this “eternal mind,” his heart and his thoughts will still be English. As the speaker conceives it, even after death, his heart will still “give […] back the thoughts” (Line 11) that England gave him, including “[h]er sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; / [a]nd laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness” (Line 12-13).

Like the opening lines, the final lines of the poem counsel that, if the speaker dies during WWI, readers should take comfort in the fact that England survives. Thus, the poem ends: “In hearts at peace, under an English heaven” (Line 14). The speaker does not express any sorrow over his possible death, because England will live on.