RUPERT BROOKE
I
The war has at last given birth to a good battle-song. It rings out from the next number of New Numbers—that grey quarterly which a quartet of young poets began to issue some twelve months ago, and which is still courageously not merely keeping alive in spite of the war, but actually growing more living by dint of it. One of the quartet (and the greatest, I still firmly believe) is our fellow-townsman, Mr. Lascelles Abercrombie. Another, the youngest, is Mr. Rupert Brooke—and it is from his lips that the new song has sprung. It is not a long song, so I can repeat it all. Its title is simply The Soldier. It accepts the traditional form.
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner 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.
229
