“The Soldier”
by
Rupert Brooke
THE SOLDIER
(1914)
If I should die, think only this of
me:
That there’s some corner of a
foreign field
That is for ever
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.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/brooke/vsoldier.html
COMMENTARY
First of all, this commentary is going to focus on one
of the most important works by Rupert Brooke; “The Soldier” which
belongs to war works of this author since it focuses on the situation of a
soldier in the war or before it. Apart of the typical analysis of the poem I am
going to try to explain how Rupert Brooke shows World War I, especially, in
this poem.
“The Soldier” is a poem in which only one
person speaks and tells his feelings. The poem seems on the surface to be about
a soldier that is far from home not yet disillusioned by the horrors of the
war; he loves his country,
Rupert Brooke opens the poem in the first stanza
saying: “If I should die, think only this of me:/ That there’s some
corner of a foreign field/ That is for ever
During the course of the poem the author deals with
two issues: death and love. Death because the speaker is a soldier, most of
them die, and possibly he will die in the war; and love because the speaker
shows us the love that he has for his native land,
I think that this poem “The soldier” could
be divided into two parts, it is by means of its stanzas, but I mean: the first
stanza refers to the physical part of people, in this case the soldier; and the
second stanza would be the psychological part. In the physical part, the
speaker uses words that refer to things that you can touch, more or less, or verbs
as for example “bore, shaped, made”.
In the second part, the psychological, the speaker refers to feelings or things
that you can not touch, using words as for example “mind, thoughts, sounds, dreams”.
The meaning in the poem is straightforward; while you
are reading you can understand what Rupert Brooke is talking about and
referring to. I mean that “The Soldier” is not a very complex poem
when talking about its language. The author of this poem uses clear
connotations to refer to what he wants to mean. We can say that Rupert Brooke
does not use an elaborate language.
The author dedicates the poem to death and love, as I
have said some lines before, and Brooke explains the feelings that the soldier
has when he becomes part of a war. The speaker, I mean, the soldier, in my
opinion, represents all the soldiers, and what they feel when they are far away
of their own country, in this case,
“The Soldier” could be autobiographical
since there are first person pronouns. We can observe: I (line 1) and me (line
1). Both pronouns refer to the speaker, he talks in first person and in both
the first and the second stanza, the speaker is addressing somebody. For this
reason it could be that the author was telling us his own story, a story that
maybe could have been real. “His early poetry was classically inspired,
with death as its most frequent theme throughout. Later, he wrote more from his
personal experience gained in the
With regard to the length of the poem, “The
Soldier” is fourteen lines long and it is written in a two stanza structure.
The first stanza is eight lines long and the second, seven lines long. The
rhyme scheme is –abab cdcd- in the first stanza and –abc abc- in
the second. By means of its characteristics we could say that this is a sonnet. I think that the rhyme scheme is quite
regular during the course of the poem.
It would be interesting to talk about the historical
context of Rupert Brooke and his works. Now I am going to try to explain how
Rupert Brooke shows World War I in this work.
“Robert Brooke was rather a pre-war poet. That
is said because this author writes before the World War I since his life was
not so long during the war, Brooke died only a year after this war. He died in
1915 off the
The World War I was a world conflict that started in
the year 1914 and ended in 1918. All started with the assassination of the
Gavrilo Princep. In this war a lot of people died. The soldiers fought for
their country and the other people were killed by the enemies. They knew that
somebody had been in a town because everything was destroyed. (World War I-
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). “Families were altered by the
departure of many men. With the death or absence of the primary wage earner,
women were forced into the workforce in unprecedented numbers, at least in many
of the Entente powers. At the same time, industry needed to replace the lost
labourers sent to war. This aided the struggle for voting rights for
women”.(World War I- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
“The experiences of the war led to a sort of
collective national trauma afterwards for all the participating countries. The
optimism of 1900 was entirely gone and those who fought in the war became what
is known as "the Lost Generation" because they never fully recovered
from their experiences and because so many died”. (World War I-
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
For all this reason that I have already quoted, I
think that the poets started to write. They wanted to remember that important
event in his life and especially he wants people to identify with his works.
In this poem that I have chosen, “The
Soldier”, I think that a lot of people felt identified, especially
soldiers and their families, they had their native land over all. Rupert Brooke
immerses the reader in the theme and at the same time the poem makes you think
about what it is saying, the war, the death for their country, the end of a
life. This poem is a little sad, because you know that a lot of families were
broken, but it is also beautiful. “The Soldier” is composed by
simple words and especially has a simple theme. I think that there is nothing
confusing or complex.
by Merce Quiralte Moragues.
(6 April 2006)
|
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cited WebPage
- World War I- Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundations. 2 May 2006. Visited 2 May 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
-Rupert Brooke- Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundations. 29 April 2006. Visited 2 May 2006.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Brooke
Sources:
- Rupert Brooke: V. The Soldier. Paul Groves.
22 July 2005. Visited 2 May 2006.
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/brooke/vsoldier.html
Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Merce Quiralte Moragues
mamerqui@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press