Remembrance

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some 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.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

a pulse in the eternal mind, no less

gives back somewhere 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.

The Soldier, Rupert Brooke, 1914