The Soldier -- Rupert Brooke

(Poem #280) 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

Patriotism seems to be somewhat unfashionable nowadays. This is particularly
true with respect to war poetry, where patriotism often seems to be
conflated with jingoism, and spurned by the poet. Nor, in a way, is this
altogether wrong - the two World Wars (and, to a large extent, the poets who
served as their scribes and witnesses, embedding them in the racial memory)
have done a great deal towards deromanticising war, and exposing a sheltered
populace to its grim realities.

This inevitably gives today's poem a slightly old-fashioned flavour - the
poet is not, perhaps, glorifying war, but he certainly understands the
motivations that would encourage young men to 'throw their lives away', and
is not afraid of pronouncing them valid. To quote Margaret Lavington's
wonderful biographical note (see end),

  Each one of these five sonnets faces, in a quiet exultation, the thought
  of death, of death for England; and understands, as seldom even English
  poetry has understood, the unspeakable beauty of the thought:

      "These laid the world away; poured out the red
      Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
           Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
           That men call age; and those who would have been,
      Their sons, they gave -- their immortality.

It is interesting to compare Brooke's poem with what is perhaps my favourite
war poem, Yeats' "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death". While at one level
the attitudes are diametrically opposed ("those that I guard, I do not
love", says Yeats' airman, dismissing patriotism as a game he's opted out
of), on a deeper level they are very similar - there is the same sense of
tension, the premonition of death and the deeply personal drive to go to war
anyway, so that the net effect is one not of fear but of a quiet
exhilaration - tinged with sadness, perhaps, but never with regret.

m.

Links:

Yeats' poem is at poem #32

Margaret Lavington's biography is too long to include, so I'll merely point
to it: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/7086/brookebionote.htm

And Bob Blair has a nice writeup on one of Brooke's other poems, The
Chilterns, a lot of which is relevant to The Soldier as well:
http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/990803.htm