"The Soldier"
By Rupert Brooke

Transcription, correction, editorial commentary, and markup by Students and Staff of the University of Virginia

Sources

London : Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915"The Soldier" was originally published the fifth of a series of six poems under the title "1914" in Rupert Brooke's posthumous volume 1914, and Other Poems, published in 1915. Our edition has been transcribed from the Internet Archive's copy of the first edition.

Editorial Statements

Research informing these annotations draws on publicly-accessible resources, with links provided where possible. Annotations have also included common knowledge, defined as information that can be found in multiple reliable sources. If you notice an error in these annotations, please contact lic.open.anthology@gmail.com.

Original spelling and capitalization is retained, though the long s has been silently modernized and ligatured forms are not encoded.

Hyphenation has not been retained, except where necessary for the sense of the word.

Page breaks have been retained. Catchwords, signatures, and running headers have not.

Materials have been transcribed from and checked against first editions, where possible. See the Sources section for more information.

Citation

Brooke, Rupert. "The Soldier". 1914, and Other Poems, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915 , pp 9-11 . Literature in Context: An Open Anthology. http://anthologydev.lib.virginia.edu/work/Brooke/brooke-soldier. Accessed: 2024-12-30T18:03:01.656Z

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TEST Audio

1914
AND OTHER POEMS
BY RUPERT BROOKE

LONDON SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD.
3 ADAM STREET ADELPHI W. C. 1915 15 V. THE SOLDIER 1If I should die, think only this of me: 2That there's some corner of a foreign field 3That is for ever England. There shall be 4In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; 5A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware. 6Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, 7A body of England's, breathing English air, 8Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. 9And think, this heart, all evil shed away, 10A pulse in the eternal mind, no less 11Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; 12Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; 13And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness 14In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.