Remixing Poetry.

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke

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.

Random Facts

-Brooke died of dysentery and/or blood poisoning from WWI

-Winston Churchill used his death and work as a reason to recruit more soldiers for England

-known as an idealistic war sonnet

-about the experience in WWI

-used by Nixon during Apollo 11

Anthem for Doomed Youth by Wilfred Owen

Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare


Professor Snape (or in the real world, Alan Rickman) reads the famous poem, Sonnet 130: