Nineteen-Fourteen - V. The Soldier

by Rupert Brooke

If i should die, think only this of me:   That there’s some comer 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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