Summary and composition
Here, we will focus on the summary and composition of “The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke.
Summary
A British soldier thinks about dying in battle and describes his patriotic feelings towards England. The soldier imagines dying in some foreign corner of the world which will also become part of England through his death. He then continues to praise his country depicting it as a nurturing woman with several qualities such as happiness, playfulness, and gentleness.
Composition
In this section, we will outline some of the overall features of the poem, by looking at both its outer composition (stanzas, verses, graphical expression) and inner composition (beginning, subdivision, course).
Outer composition
“The Soldier” is structured as a sonnet, which is a two-stanza poem in which the first stanza is an octet (has eight lines) and the second stanza is a sextet (has six lines).
The poem combines the rhyme schemes of Shakespearian and Petrarchan sonnets. The octet follows the Shakespearean rhyme scheme ABABCDCD, while the sextet follows the Pet...