Dymock poets - The Soldier - Rupert Brooke (General)

by slowhands , proud of his ancient Dean Forest roots, Monday, November 14, 2005, 02:09 (6953 days ago) @ slowhands

The Dymock poets were a literary group of the early 20th century, who made their home in the Gloucestershire village of Dymock, just to the north of the Forest. They were Robert Frost, Lascelles Abercrombie, Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Wilfred Wilson Gibson, and John Drinkwater, all of whom lived in the village in the period between 1911 and 1914. They published their own quarterly containing poems such as Brooke's masterpiece, The Soldier. The First World War resulted in the break-up of the community. Brooke die from blood poisoning following an infected mosquito bite on his way to Gallipoli.

The Soldier

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.

Rupert Brooke 1887 - 1915