The Soldier

"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."

I have in my possession a copy of Brooke's 1914 and other Poems, printed in November 1915 (the tenth impression) with the following two inscriptions on the flyleaf:

In the centre of the page: "Sgt. E.G. Evans/NoT Canadian General Hospital/April 1917. France".

At the top left corner of the page, in a different hand: "From dear old Sgt. McGregor, who died in Not. C.G. H. Dec 19th 1917".

For all of his eclipse these days by Owen, Sassoon, et al., Brooke was wildly popular, and not only on the home front. On this 100th anniversary of the armistice, it might be worthwhile to remember the ideals for which "those who died as cattle" did die: naive as they may have been, they thought they were fighting to secure a better world.

Have we come anywhere near to realizing that aspiration?