Featherstone Make a Difference Forum

Rupert Brooke
The Soldier
IF I should die, think only this of me:
    That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever 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 the 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.

if you want to know what soldiering waass really like in World war 1 then I suggest you read the works of Seigfried Sassoon and Wilfrid owen.
Broek's peom was written early in the war when people still had ridiculous romantic notions about what war was like.