Page Title

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.

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NOTE

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'The Soldier', being the conclusion and the finale to Brooke's 1914 war sonnet series, deals with the death and accomplishments of a soldier. Written with fourteen lines in a Petrarchan/Italian sonnet form, the poem is divided into an opening octet, and  then followed by a concluding sestet.

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