The Soldier / Rupert Brooke

"The Soldier" is a poem written by Rupert Brooke. The poem is the fifth sonnet in a sonnet series of poems entitled 1914.

It is often contrasted with Wilfred Owen's 1917 anti-war poem Dulce Et Decorum Est

The manuscript is located at King's College, Cambridge.

References to "The Soldier"
Part of "The Soldier" was adapted for the contingency television address that would have been read by President Richard Nixon in the event the Apollo 11 astronauts became stranded on the moon.

Lyrics by Roger Waters' "The Gunner's Dream" (from the Pink Floyd's album The Final Cut) make reference to "The Soldier".

Implicit references to this poem (and several others) are made in Muse's song "Soldier's Poem" from their album Black Holes & Revelations.

Analysis
This poem was written at the beginning of the First World War in 1914, as part of a series of sonnets written by Rupert Brooke. Brooke himself, predominantly a pre-War poet, died the year after “The Soldier” was published. “The Soldier”, being the conclusion and the finale to Brooke’s ‘1914’ war sonnet series, deals with the death and accomplishments of a soldier. Written in fourteen line Petrarchan / Italian sonnet form, the poem is divided into an opening octet, and then followed by a concluding sestet.

The rhyme scheme of the octet follows the Shakespearean / Elizabethan (abab cdcd) form, while the sestet follows the Petrarchan / Italian (efg efg) form.

The sonnet encompasses the memoirs of a fallen soldier who declares his patriotism to his homeland by declaring that his sacrifice shall be the eternal ownership, by England, of the portion of land where he is buried. In the volta (or point of change) dividing octet from sestet, he moves from talking about his body's continued presence in the earth, to postulating a similar continuation of his mind or soul as part of an "eternal mind."