rupert brooke

[paul guthrie]

Are the word " some corner of a foreign field" etc. on his headstone? Is it a CWGC headstone? Who wrote the poem? Thanks, this is for an article for our us magazine about the MGC man buried in Kentucky who has the verse on his stone.

[ianw]

No , Paul ,the poem written by Brooke (who else) is inscribed on a stone at the foot of the grave . The beautiful original cairn of local pink and white mottled stones was replaced with a v.large and inappropriate monument by Brooke's mother - some say heavy enough to ensure he would never escape her in death as he had in life ! Also a rather nasty statue was erected to him in the local town where he is viewed as a Greek hero rather like Byron.

[Myrtle]

Brooke's friends, who had buried him on Skyros, piled the pink and white lumps of marble over his grave and put a large and smaller wooden cross at each end. When the stones were replaced the crosses were said to have been taken to his old school at Rugby.

Myrtle

[Dragon]

Paul, if you wish to look up this rather literary poem by Brooke, its title is The Soldier.

Gwyn

[Guest J.Woodward]

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 became,in Parfitt's words, "an important document of national preparation for war." Originally entitled 'The Recruit', this sonnet entitled '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:

At the outbreak of World War I Brooke joined the Royal Naval Division, he served at Antwerp, and was sent to the Dardanelles where he died of blood poisoning at the island of Skíros. Here is the poem in full:

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

There is a rather nice memorial to Brooke at Rugby School if you have a chance to view it.