Rupert Brooke

(1887-1915)
His life

● English poet, a wellborn, gifted

● School - academics and athletics, popular in literary and
political circles
● Befriended with Winston Churchill, Henry James and
Virginia Woolf
● 1908-1912: Noel Olivier, Ka Cox, Cathleen Nesbitt (after
this traveled to France/Germany
● joined Royal Navy (1st destination - Antwerp)
● died of septicemia (blood poisoning) / buried in an olive
grove on Skyros
His works and critics
● Before WW1, war viewed Romantically (The Romance of War / The Romance of Dying
in Battle)
● Brooke was often criticised for his over- romantic view of the War but here he cleverly
interjected the idea that death is not without loss.
● Critical Appraisal:
● John Lehmann - ‘’sentimental and unrealistic’’
● Robert Brainard Pearsall stated: ‘’Slightness in mass and idea’’ / ‘’lyrical, charming
and companionable’’.
● Doris Elder - says that Brooke’s work reflects mood before 1914
● George Parfitt - points to V. The Soldier that it was
‘’an important document of national preparation for war’’
 1914
● Sonnet sequence
(5 war sonnets)

The Romance of War The Romance of dying in battle

 The Soldier
● sonnet, a love poem to England
● explores a relationship between a patriotic British
soldier and his homeland
● the soldier is very young
● the title itself suggests an anonymous person (soldiers
who died in WWI), reflecting the willingness to
sacrifice and sacrifices that were made
● most used themes in this poem: love and death
● overall more optimistic and patriotic
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.
Sources

https://www.slideserve.com/cody/rupert-brooke
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Rupert-Brook
e
https://www.rupertbrooke.com/poems/1914/i_peace/
https://poets.org/poet/rupert-brooke
Thank you for your attention