Rosenburg continues to use language to convey the hopeless situation with onomatopoeic words to describe a supply cart moving amongst the dead. The ‘shattered track’ with its ‘racketed’ and ‘rusty freight’ make the cart seem slow, unstable and not only useless to the dead but to the living as well as its supplies are ‘rusty’. An obious theme within ‘The Soldier’ is patriotism, it communicates that the soldier in the poem has died for his country and his death has ‘no less/ given somewhere back the thoughts by England giving’. The belief that the soldier owes his life to England as ‘a body of England’s’ contrasts with the belief of Rosenberg who depicts the cart’s contents, ‘stuck out like many crowns of thorns’ which could be interpreted as religious imagery, comparing the pointless crucifixion of Jesus and the pointless deaths of the men, who are remembered, like Jesus, as martyrs. A simile compares the ‘rusty stakes’ to sceptres of ancient kings, like Canute who thought he could hold back the tide. This is a classical metaphor to refer to the impossible attempt of fighting to try and ‘stay the flood’ of the enemy. This suggests the wastefulness of lives as ‘the brothers dear’ have no protection and no chance of succeeding in the conflict against ‘brutish men’.
As the cart runs over dead bodies, Rosenberg continues to emphasise the ‘brutal destruction’ of war and reflects on the mysterious change from life to death in both ‘friend and foeman’. ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ shows war does not respect the dead as wheels ‘lurched over sprawled bodies’ but ‘their shut mouths made no moan’ and so, because they are dead, they no longer matter. Whhereas, ‘The Soldier’ is symbolically respected through his ‘corner of a foreign field’ and for devoting his life to ‘England’. ‘Shut mouths’ is also suggestive of the censorship of the letters soldiers wrote home to their families; not able to tell them the reality of war. It stirs the question that if no one knew the extent of suffering the soldiers went through then what is the purpose of their deaths, is it of any value. These thoughts are conjured through rhetorical questions in ‘Dead Man’s Dump’, ‘have they gone into you?/ Somewhere they must have gone…’ Both of the poems highlight dreaming, in ‘The Soldier’, Brooke compares dreaming to England, ‘as happy and her day’ and appeals to the reader’s senses by imagining ‘her sights and sounds’. ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ mentions dreaming in a different light, those who are injured in the war ‘dreamed of home’, hoping that they will see it again and imagining as they take their final breaths. Brooke communicates that the death of the soldier was for England so that others may appreciate ‘her flowers to love, her ways to roam’ and to uphold the ‘English heaven’. The religious imagery in this poem revolves around the country, ‘blest by the suns of home’, unlike ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ which respects the ‘God-ancestralled’ wonders and reminds the reader of the Christian burial service, ‘man born of woman’.
It personifies Earth using strong imagery as evil waiting for the men to die ‘fretting for their decay’, compared to Brooke who personifies England as the mother who ‘bore’ and ‘shaped’ the man, ‘all evil shed away’. Sibilance is used echo the sound of shells dropping and ‘crying’ whilst conveying the idea that war has ‘suspended – stopped’ the men in their prime, ‘strength of their strength’, for earth to have them. Where sibilance is used once again to describe the instance of death as ‘none saw their spirits’ shadow shake the grass’, Rupert Brooke considers the idea that even after death there is ‘a pulse in the Eternal mind’. Rosenberg also considers the instance of death as men ‘strode time with vigorous life,/ till the shrapnel called ‘an end!’ and others came to ‘an end’ through ‘bleeding pangs’ and ‘borne on stretchers’. Rosenberg’s blunt approach to ‘doomed’ death is then juxtaposed when dealing with the spiritual concept of the soul leaving the dying body through euphemism, ‘when the swift iron burning bee/ drained the wild honey of their youth’, similar to the euphemisms in ‘The Soldier’ as he is ‘washed by the rivers’.
‘The Soldier’ reflects on what life enjoys, ‘laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness/ in hearts at peace’. ‘Dead Man’s Dump' describes the joy and amazement of those who are still living, their appreciation of their ‘lucky limbs’ and ‘untouched thoughts’ but the poet still reminds the reader of those who have been ‘flung on the shrieking pyre’ ‘joined to the great sunk silences’. There is an obvious contrast between the ‘laughter’ in life that Brookes highlights and the ‘silences’ of death that Rosenberg highlights. Even though ‘The Soldier’ is about a fallen soldier, the event of his death is not mentioned because this would spoil the uplifting tone of the poem, whereas Rosenberg focuses of an individual’s hideous death. His brains are ‘splattered’ and ‘the drowning soul was sunk too deep/ for human tenderness’. The metaphor is symbolic of his life slipping away from him as he is too badly hurt to survive; this underlying spirituality is echoed throughout the poem and the idea of the soul sinking is suggested when it says, ‘the great sunk’. Rosenberg continually contemplates the soul being the connection between life and death. He explores this through a soldier who is close to death, described as a ‘choked soul’ who hears the cart in the distance. He attempts to stay away from death by ‘beating for light’ and longs for ‘the end’ and the cart’s wheels to ‘break’.
Brookes euphemises the decaying of the soldier’s body when he says, ‘In that rich earth a richer dust concealed’. It describes how the remains of the soldier’s body will add to the earth around him making it more meaningful, similar to the remains of the bodies adding to the ‘coloured clay’ and ‘grass’ in ‘Dead Man’s Dump’. Rosenberg describes the bodies decaying as ‘strange’, ‘sinister’ and ‘black’ making the process seem hellish and more vivid to the reader.
In conclusion, to some poets, war seems a glorious adventure and to others, like Rosenberg, it is merely brutal destruction. Brookes expresses how he should be remembered ‘if’ he is to die. His poem reflects on the pleasures he has enjoyed in life and is not bitter towards death as those pleasures which have come from his country, will live on. The reminiscent tone of the poem is enforced by the frequent use punctuation to show his ‘pause for thought’ and listing all the ‘glorious’ aspects of life he has experienced in England, proud to represent ‘English air’ in a foreign land. Rosenberg, however, feels that ‘the air is loud with death’ and finds it a difficult concept to be at peace with. He questions different interpretations of it which is also reflected in the use of punctuation in the poem. A variety of punctuation is used to show Rosenberg’s thought process as he tries to tackle the subject of death and its purpose in the context of war. He builds up the suspense of saving a dying soldier’s life as he is symbolically ‘stretched at the crossroads’: ‘we heard his weak scream/ we heard his very last sound’ only for it to be too late and ‘our wheels grazed his dead face’. His poem represents a personal journey of bitter emotions towards war, the disregard of life and the evil and wondrous forces that revolve around death.
