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,
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