Brooke, Rupert - The soldier, "1914 and Other Poems"

Brooke's poetic legacy

This poem is noted for its lyricism which, together with his handsome appearance and premature death, made Brooke a favourite poet among the young people of his generation.

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.

Se dovessi morire, pensa solo questo di me: che c’è qualche angolo di una terra straniera che sarà per sempre Inghilterra. In quella ricca terra ci sarà nascosta una cenere più ricca; una cenere che l’Inghilterra ha partorito, a cui ha dato forma, che ha reso consapevole di se stessa, a cui ha dato, un tempo, i propri fiori da amare, le sue strade da percorrere, un corpo che appartiene all’Inghilterra, che ha respirato aria inglese, percorsa da fiumi e benedetta dai raggi del Sole della propria patria.

The soldier's eternal bond

Brooke addresses the reader back home and at the same time he is there: there is a lyrical eye.

This solider is born in England and he was educated to English values, therefore he is constitutionally a hero who celebrates the country he belongs to.

 His dust is richer because he died as a hero.

This sonnet celebrates in fact the country, represented by the soldier, its beauty and the glorious values he has learnt – he embodies the best values of it and at the same time he glorifies this so worth loving country through his heroic deeds –.

The earth of a foreign land is therefore made better by his own dust.

The spiritual legacy

From line 5 to line 8 there is a fundamental idyllic dimension of those who have enjoyed the beauty and exclusiveness of England with its superior values.

Between the soldier and his country there is in fact a spiritual legacy (ITA: eredità), an immortal legacy that is expressed in the following lines of the second stanza.

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.

E pensa che questo cuore, liberatosi dal male terreno, come a un battito nella mente eterna, non di meno restituirà da qualche parte i valori che l’Inghilterra gli ha regalato; i suoi paesaggi e suoni; i giorni felici dei sogni (di quando eravamo in patria); e le risate, imparate dagli amici; e la gentilezza, appresa nei nostri cuori (in un periodo di pace nell’unica dimensione possibile) sotto un cielo inglese.

The English soldier's resurrection

It is the poet’s a legacy, but also a legacy between any English soldier and their country: man-country/ man-fatherland is exclusive tie celebrated here.

The immense value of this English legacy is a Kipling’s echo.

This celebrated tie can be understood in the only possible dimension of death: a dead soldier is bound to resurrect, since the tie is so spiritual to give rise to resurrection.

• The natural consequence of this glorious tie is resurrection: he will be rewarded for having died in war. Here the poet is talking about God’s grace: he is blessed in God’s grace because he died in war.  In these lines the British, who have learnt those values, are presented in a unique condition.

• Gentleness means cultural superiority.

• Brooke represents this soldier as the hero, the spiritual link between him and the country and an image of death that is no physical suffering – the beautiful death of the hero –: it is dealt in almost abstract terms.