The Soldier

I had considered many things for today, children’s nonsense poems, another Haiku or finally giving you that book review I’ve feel like I’ve been promising for ages. But today is Sunday. It seems like all important events have happened on Sunday. And today is no different, it is not appropriate on today, of all auspicious days to post something humorous, or even a haiku. Because today is Remembrance Day. Anything else wouldn’t be appropriate, I think. 

For those who do not know, Remembrance Sunday is a day when we stop and recognise the sacrifice of thousands of men who died and fought in the First and Second World Wars in the early 20th century. 

This weeks piece is called The Soldier 1914 by Rupert Brooke, it is melancholic, subtly hopeful in its initial outlook, but leaves the reader feeling rather patriotic. It is, an ode to England and Englishness, after all both wars were fought on foreign soil. It gives hope to England and English men who fought in the war, although Brooke didn’t know it at the time, this war would last for four years, he died in 1915. It was a different world back then, this war and the second one to follow irrevocable changed the world and society as we know it. War isn’t always heroic, it is often a waste.

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever 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 the 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