1. Rupert Brooke Pre-WW1 Poet
Wealthy family, studied at Cambridge, very good looking in an English way
Went on long gap year
Part of the Georgian Poet group which was neo-Romantic in tone (included other poets such as Robert Graves and DH Lawrence)
Country weekends spent skinny dipping in local streams
Returned to UK just prior to the outbreak of WW1
Joined up, but died on the way to Gallipoli from an infected insect bite; never saw the action
Image source:

2. The Romance of War Before WW1, war viewed Romantically
Romantic in the tradition of Wordsworth and Coleridge (Early 19th Century)
A period of innocence, naivety
Reflected in Rupert Brooke’s series of five sonnets – Nineteen Fourteen

3. The Romance of War Excitement about a cause to fight for:
Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
I. Peace
Dear! of all happy in the hour, most blest
II. Safety
Honour has come back, as a king, to earth,
And paid his subjects with a royal wage;
And Nobleness walks in our ways again;
And we have come into our heritage.
III. The Dead

4. The Romance of dying in battle
Death was seen as an honour; as glorious; a way to immortality
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
III. The Dead
Their sons, they gave, their immortality
He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
IV. The Dead
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
V. The Soldier

5. Neo-Romanticism
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, V. The Soldier are waters blown by changing winds to laughter And lit by the rich skies, all day IV. Death

6. Patriotism 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; 
V. The Soldier

7. Critical Appraisal Panned by the critics for its sentimentality:
John Lehmann referred to it as “sentimental and unrealistic”.
Robert Brainard Pearsall suggested that it had “Slightness in mass and idea” but also states that his work was “lyrical, charming and companionable”.
But these critics had the benefit of a hindsight not afforded the young Brooke.

8. Critical Appraisal
Doris Eder (among other critics) suggests that Brooke’s work reflects the mood before 1914 – “Brooke’s war sonnet perfectly captured the mood of the moment”
George Parfitt suggests, V. The Soldier became "an important document of national preparation for war." – taking advantage of the same naivety that other young men who joined up possessed.

9. References
First World War Poetry Digital Archive. (2013). Rupert Brooke. Retrieved April, 2013, from \
Flanders Fields Music. (2009). Biography of John McCrae Flanders Fields Author. Retrieved, April,
2013, from
Harry Rusche. (2013). Rupert Brooke. Retrieved April, 2013, from
Peddie, John. (2013). Prose & Poetry – the Story of John McCrae. Retrieved April, 2013, from
Poetry Foundation. (2013). Rupert Brooke Biography. Retrieved April, 2013, from