The Soldier, a sonnet by Rupert Brook.

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,

mid-aware, gave once her flowers to love her ways to roam, a body of England's, breathing

English air, washed by the rivers, blessed by sons

of home.

And think this heart all evil shut 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 learn to friends and gentleness

in hearts at peace under an English heaven.

Hi, I'm Andrew Kern, sitting in for David Kern on this remembrance of World War I.

It's actually not November 11th as I read.

It's a little bit after that, but I'm reading, sitting in for David, reading

some World War I poems because I'm astonished by how little we Americans make of the

Great War, as they call it in Europe. It changed us as a nation. One of those changed them forever experiences and yet we we hardly made note of it

when it passed this year and this year was the 100th anniversary to the day when on 11 11 at 11 11 in the morning in

1918 four years of war had come to an end I think we ought to remember it more it was a

world changing war in a much deeper way than, for example, what's happening right now in Afghanistan is, unless, of course, things change.

An old world came to an end.

But when it started, and it started with a bang, and I don't mean that it started with a bang from Gavria Princep's gun when he killed the Archduke.

I mean that it started with a bang in the sense that it was a let's have at it.

Rupert Brooke, who wrote the poem I just read and we'll close with, wrote another poem.

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