Throughout British history, there have been a multitude of events which radically changed the country and its people. One of these events, World War I, has influenced British literature and the authors, such as Rupert Brooke, giving lead to different themes and ideas. While Rupert Brooke started his career writing joyful poetry, his role as a soldier in World War I influenced his writing to focus on honorable sacrifice. Rupert Brooke was not unlike most authors before the war and wrote poems about love, happiness, and beauty. One poem written in 1909, The Voice, describes an unsuccessful romance between the speaker and an unknown lady. “And I knew/That this was the hour of knowing/And the night and the woods and you/Were one together, and
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“White plates and cups, clean-gleaming/Ringed with blue lines; and feather, faery dust/Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust/Of friendly bread;and many-tasting food…” (Lines 27-30). Even though these are simply everyday objects, Brooke gives them a sense of everlasting beauty and praise. The poem also hints at a wonderful world where there is no darkness or evil, but only delight and love. There are many other poems that Rupert Brooke wrote which had similar themes and tones, but once the war began in 1914, Brooke was drafted into the chaos which changed him greatly.
During the beginning year of the war, Rupert Brooke wrote one of his first literature pieces that was radically different, but similar as well, from his joyful poems before. This poem, titled The Soldier, expressed “...the idea of release through self-sacrifice that many experience with the coming of war” (Larson). The poem oddly is about the probably death of a soldier, yet it also has little to do with dying. Death itself is absent and there are many references to life, not death, however it does assume the speaker’s death. “If I should die, think only this of me/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is
“White plates and cups, clean-gleaming/Ringed with blue lines; and feather, faery dust/Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust/Of friendly bread;and many-tasting food…” (Lines 27-30). Even though these are simply everyday objects, Brooke gives them a sense of everlasting beauty and praise. The poem also hints at a wonderful world where there is no darkness or evil, but only delight and love. There are many other poems that Rupert Brooke wrote which had similar themes and tones, but once the war began in 1914, Brooke was drafted into the chaos which changed him greatly.
During the beginning year of the war, Rupert Brooke wrote one of his first literature pieces that was radically different, but similar as well, from his joyful poems before. This poem, titled The Soldier, expressed “...the idea of release through self-sacrifice that many experience with the coming of war” (Larson). The poem oddly is about the probably death of a soldier, yet it also has little to do with dying. Death itself is absent and there are many references to life, not death, however it does assume the speaker’s death. “If I should die, think only this of me/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is