Sunday WW1 Poets...

The theme for this month's WW1 poetry 

is

Rupert Brooke

1887 - 1915

(v) 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 wrote this series of poems entitled The Sonnets in the autumn of 1914 following the outbreak of the First World War.

He died from an infected mosquito bite in April 1915 on a French hospital ship on his way to Gallipoli and is buried in an olive grove on Skyros in Greece.


~***~

This rather lovely wood carving of a WW1 Soldier has recently been installed in a local park.


It's by Cheshire wood carver Andy Burgess

The Soldier
Alexandra Park, Wigan

©Picksipics, 2015

~***~