Literature

I sometimes wonder if I should learn more about Sri Lankan literature and poets, rather than quoting English ones. However, through living in London for most of my life and being educated here, the British classics are also part of who I am. So this is why I am writing about the well-known poem, The Soldier.

This sonnet by Rupert Brooke, written while a soldier in WW1, is all the more poignant as he died aged 27, on Skyros, an island off Greece. While I don’t see war as a solution to problems, nor do I wish to undermine the risks taken by armed and security forces for the benefit of others. So I was in two minds about relating this poem to immigrants but the sentiments of being far from your country of affection apply to me as well as they do to soldiers. The expression of longing in particular, has always meant a lot to me since I first heard it. Above all, the writing is understated and powerful, crossing all borders such that England also means Sri Lanka, or whichever country you want it to be.

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.

                                                                                    Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)