Brooke, Rupert. "The Soldier".

Summary

- the speaker imagines he would be killed in action and turned into dust in a foreign land

- the vision of his dead body turning the part of the "foreign field" where it would lie into England and planting the sentiments of England there

Analysis

(from Norton Anthology)

- a youthfully idealistic patriotic war sonnet ("If I should die, think only this of me…"), the climax of his sonnet sequence concerned with WW I

- expresses the pride of being an Englishman, love for his home country, and conviction of the superiority of his nation

- unlike his fellow war poets, Brooke fails to respond to the horrors of the war (also because the sonnet was written at the very beginning of the war)

- because of his exemplary enthusiasm expressed in the sonnet (and also for his attractive appearance), Brooke became the iconic war poet for the British cause