World War I Poets: Rupert Brooke

World War I set many precedents with the use of technology such as tanks, mustard gas, and machine guns. The high death toll was also a new record. One thing the war did not change, however, was the patriotic feeling of those on the home front. Due to propaganda, and perhaps simple naïveté, the English public held a vision of the war as a noble endeavor on England’s part. Like much of the English public, Rupert Brooke never actually saw combat. His “The Soldier” depicts the simple patriotism of the English home front.

Brooke’s sonnet, like all sonnets, seeks an answer, a resolution to a conflict. However, I think his sonnet is distinctive in that he is really trying to answer two questions, not just one. The first question is “what to do when a loved one is killed in battle.” The poem opens with the lines “If I am dead, think only this of me:/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England…” (lines 1-3, 1098). The problem, then, is not only that the beloved soldier has been killed, but also that his body will remain on the battlefield. This means, of course, that it is highly unlikely that family and friends will get to inter or cremate the body, or otherwise dispose of it in a respectful manner. They will have to follow a different path of mourning than they would if the young man had died at home; there can be no easy sense of closure. Brooke hints at this different grief in mentioning that they should think only of England. If the soldier has to tell his family what to think, that means that there are a multitude of thoughts they could have, not all of which would be so patriotic. The family’s reaction might be to ask, “why him?” and to then feel anger towards their government for getting involved in the war, and for the war itself.

Another question the family might ask, which is the second question the sonnet addresses, is simply “why? For what purpose did this man die?”. The response, resoundingly, is “for England.” The word “England” appears four times in the poem, “English” twice. This repetition of both the proper noun and the adjective serves to rouse strong nationalistic feelings: pride and a feeling that England is superior to other nations. As mentioned in podcast#15, there is a sense that this man’s spot of England makes the world a better place. His body, euphemistically called dust, will enrich the ground where he fell, “…There will be/In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;/A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware” (lines 3-5, 1098). Here Brooke becomes nostalgic. He lists all the benefits this man has had by growing up an Englishman, perhaps to make the reader also grateful to live in a nation where such benefits could be had. He concentrates on the happy past rather than the present cruel reality of war and death and loss. England gave the soldier, “…her flowers to love, her ways to roam,/A body of England’s, breathing English air,/Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home” (lines 6-8, 1099). Brooke is highlighting England’s natural beauty, and that this man had the freedom to enjoy it.

The final stanza is the resolution. Comfort is given to the family in knowing that the soldier is no longer suffering and in a better place, “And think, this heart, all evil shed away,/A pulse in the Eternal mind, no less” (lines 9-10, 1099). There is some security in knowing that, although the man’s life on earth is ended and his body is far away on a lonely battlefield, his spirit is immortal and without confines of place. The poem ends by reaffirming once again that the man died for England, not just the nostalgic, beautiful England that raised him, but also for the glorious future England. Brooke notes that by his death the soldier, “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” (lines 11-14, 1099). The soldier dies that others may be happy and enjoy England’s beauty. He dies for the dreams of a nation. He dies so that there might be peace at last in his beloved England.