The Soldier Rupert Brooke

 The Soldier

Rupert Brooke
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;
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.

G.K. Chesterton Elegy in a Country Churchyard

 G.K. Chesterton

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

The men that worked for England

They have their graves at home:

And bees and birds of England

About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,

Following a falling star,

Alas, alas for England

They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,

In stately conclave met,

Alas, alas for England

They have no graves as yet

The Wound in Time Carol Ann Duffy

 The Wound in Time

Carol Ann Duffy

It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides, 
chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it. 
Not the war to end all wars; death’s birthing place; 
the earth nursing its ticking metal eggs, hatching 
new carnage. But how could you know, brave 
as belief as you boarded the boats, singing? 
The end of God in the poisonous, shrapneled air. 
Poetry gargling its own blood. We sense it was love 
you gave your world for; the town squares silent, 
awaiting their cenotaphs. What happened next? 
War. And after that? War. And now? War. War. 
History might as well be water, chastising this shore; 
for we learn nothing from your endless sacrifice. 
Your faces drowning in the pages of the sea.