The Soldier

On April 4, 1915, Dean Inge of St. Paul's Cathedral read a sonnet from the pulpit as part of his Easter Sunday sermon. The sermon was published in The Times the next day, and the sonnet therein became, as George Parfitt describes, "an important document of national preparation for war." Originally entitled 'The Recruit', Rupert Brooke's sonnet 'The Soldier' was the last in a sonnet sequence entitled '1914'. The five numbered sonnets, preceded by an unnumbered sonnet were first published in the periodical New Numbers (number 4) in January of 1915:

The Treasure, I. Peace, II. Safety, III. The Dead, IV. The Dead, V. The Soldier

Source: Internet (http://info.ox.ac.uk/jtap/tutorials/intro/brooke/vsoldier.html)

In a time before conscription, this poem was an important, effective persuasion tool for recruiting potential soldiers.

The basic, overall purpose of 'The Soldier' is to encourage English people to sign up to fight in the war. It focused on the apparent aspects, experiences and events relating to death; describing them in a positive way. One might say that the message of this poem, literally, is "Join the war! Don't be afraid of death; it is a victory for your Country."

It achieves this persuasion by introducing patriotic ideas into people's minds, describing war and death in glorious terms. During the time in which people would have read 'The Soldier', they were unaware of what the experience of war was really like. Oblivious to the reality of war's horror, people would have been susceptible to the poem's seduction. By beginning with an apostrophe, the poem appeals directly to it's reader with "If I should die think only this of me..." The poet wants people only to think positively of his death, should it come to be. He goes on to say "...That there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England", trying to make people think of his death as a victory, where his decomposing corpse conquers the land where he perished, making it become "England". This line also makes people believe that the same would apply their death if it were to come about, that their bodies would make the land where they die become "England". Continuing, he writes "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." These lines metaphorically describe his corpse as becoming "a richer dust" than that of the earth's, and personify England as being his and every English person's mother with the metaphor "a dust whom England bore". They also describe his body as "a body of England's"; implying that he belonged to his country.
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There are frequent references to "England", emphasising its importance and relevance, and England is described as "home", appropriately, a place of comfort and belonging. The last lines read, "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." These final lines use lots of peaceful, positive ideas. Firstly, the poet writes about the cleansing and purification of death, where "all ...

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