Critically appreciate Brook’s The Soldier.
The Soldier is a sonnet in which
Brooke glorifies England during the First World War. He speaks in the guise of
an English soldier as he is leaving home to go to war. The poem represents the
patriotic ideals that characterized pre-war England. It portrays death for
one’s country as a noble end and England as the noblest country for which to
die.
In the first stanza (the octave of
the sonnet) stanza, he talks about how his grave will be England herself, and
what it should remind the listeners of England when they see the grave. In the
second stanza, the sestet, he talks about this death (sacrifice for
England) as redemption; he will become “a pulse in the eternal mind”. He
concludes that only life will be the appropriate thing to give to his great
motherland in return for all the beautiful and the great things she has given
to him, and made him what he is. The soldier-speaker of the poem seeks to find
redemption through sacrifice in the name of the country.
The speaker begins by addressing the reader, and
speaking to them in the imperative: “think only this of me.” This sense of
immediacy establishes the speaker’s romantic attitude towards death in duty. He
suggests that the reader should not mourn. Whichever “corner of a foreign
field” becomes his grave; it will also become “forever England”. He will have
left a monument of England in a forever England”. He will have left a monument
in England in a foreign land, figuratively transforming a foreign soil to
England. The suggestion that English “dust” must be “richer” represents a real
attitude that the people of the Victorian age actually had...........................
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