Rupert Brooke was both a soldier and a poet who wrote one of
his most famous poems the Soldier when he was stationed at
Blandford Camp during World War I. Then something of a celebrity, he was known
for his boyish good looks and was once described as the ‘handsomest young man in England.’
He was also a friend of Winston Churchill and the then Prime
Minister, Herbert Asquith. At Blandford Camp, Rupert Brooke was a member of the
Hood Battalion of the Royal Naval Division.
‘The Soldier
If I should die,
think only this of me
That there’s a
corner of a foreign field
That is forever
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.’
His poetry has frequently been criticised for its
unrealistic, romanticised and idealistic view of war.
Rupert Brooke died of septicaemia on 23rd April
1915 from an infected mosquito bite on his way to the Gallipoli Campaign, a
conflict which turned out to be something of a disaster. He is buried on the Greek
island of Skyros located in the Aegean Sea.
(Illustration: Rupert Brooke)
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