The Soldier

"The Soldier" is a poem written by Rupert Brooke. The poem is the fifth of a series of poems entitled 1914. It is often contrasted with Wilfred Owen's 1917 antiwar poem Dulce Et Decorum Est. The manuscript is located at King's College, Cambridge.

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.