Frontispiece picture of the author from '1914 & other Poems' by Rupert Brooke. The profile is from a 1913 photograph by Sherril Schell.

Rupert Brooke



1913



From a photograph by Sherril Schell

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Friday, April 23, 1915

"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."

Quotation Context

'V. The Soldier' from the sonnet sequence '1914' by the English poet Rupert Brooke. He died in a French Hospital on the island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea on April 23, 1915, after a case of sunstroke had developed into blood poisoning. Brooke had been set to sail a few hours later as part of the Gallipoli invasion force. His first book, Poems, from 1911, was reprinted twice in May 1915. By August 1915, his second book, 1914 and other Poems, was in its seventh printing. A Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, Brooke had participated in the October 1914 Antwerp Expedition before joining the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.

Source

1914 & other Poems by Rupert Brooke, page 15, copyright © 1915 by Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson, Limited, publication date: 1915

Tags

Brooke, Rupert Brooke, 1915-04-23, death, Gallipoli, The Soldier, sonnet