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War and the Muses - "That is Forever England"
Called by W. B. Yeats "The most handsome man in England," Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) was born into a well-to-do, the son of a housemaster at Rugby School. Brooke was educated at Rugby and King's College, Cambridge. He was a good student and athlete, and--in part because of his strikingly handsome looks--a popular young man who eventually numbered among his friends E. M. Forster, Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf, and Edward Thomas.
Even as a student he was familiar in literary circles and came to know many important political, literary and social figures before the First World War. When the war came, Brooke volunteered, and served as an officer in the Royal Navy Division. He saw a little action in Belgium early in the war, about which he penned some short poems, and then shipped out for the Aegean early in 1915, to take part in the Gallipoli Campaign. He no action at Gallipoli, dieing on a hospital ship from blood poisoning contracted through careless neglect of a minor injury. After the war his friends � who included Sir Ian Hamilton, the Asquiths, and many other lights of the times � promoted him to the status of a great fallen warrior poet, with lavish tributes and even an heroic statue over his grave, on Skyros in the Aegean
| 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. |
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