Rupert Brooke

It is clear that Rupert Brooke’s poems made a major impact in Britain at the beginning of the First World War. Brooke was a pure product of the elite education system in the UK (prestigious public school followed by studies at Cambridge), and he was immediately hailed as “The Nation’s War Poet” following the publication of his 5 sonnets in 1915. Indeed, such was his reputation that Winston Churchill himself considered that “he was all that one would wish England’s noblest sons to be.”

As far as Brooke was concerned, civilisation up to 1914 was stagnant. In his first sonnet, “Peace”, he describes the world before the outbreak of war as, “old and cold and weary”, and full of “half-men” and “sick hearts that honour could not move”. Now, the cycle of war has come, “and caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping”, cleansing the young men in the same way that swimmers are cleansed in water.

In Brooke’s lines, the notion of death is trivialised: it is not to be dreaded but offers promise of better things to come. In his second sonnet, “Safety”, death seems to hold no fear at all since the poet is “safe”, a word which is repeated several times, and “Secretly armed against all death’s endeavours”. Ironically, if he is safe in living, then should he die he will be “safest of all”.

The notion of death is developed further in Sonnet III, “The Dead”. Here, he even goes so far as to proclaim that the dead may be considered as “rich”, for dying, “has made us rarer gifts than gold.” Thus, it is almost a privilege to have been killed in the fighting, for it seems to convey a status to which no other men can aspire.

In his final sonnet, “The Soldier”, which is probably his most famous, and certainly the most often cited, he makes proud reference to his country of England. He was born an Englishman, and this is something which nothing can take away from him, not even Death:

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England.

Thus, even his dead body will continue, as a “richer dust”, to declare its noble origins. Indeed, war and death are again seen as cleansing, for in dying his heart will lose all of its evil and become, “A pulse in the eternal mind”.

Brooke’s role in the fighting was to be a brief one. On his way to the Dardanelles he contracted blood poisoning and died on April 23rd, 1915. His reputation, on the other hand, lived on, and was further enhanced by the publication of his collection, 1914 and Other Poems in 1915.