Analysis and Comparison of 'The Soldier' by Rupert Brooke and 'We Lived Happily During the War' by Ilya Kaminsky War poetry often reflects not only the personal experiences of the poet but also the br
📋 Exam Question
Below, you will find two poems about war. 'The Soldier' was written by the English poet Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) upon the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The second poem was written by the Ukranian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky (b. 1977). 'We Lived Happily During the War' was first published in 2013.
Write a text in which you analyse and compare the two poems below in light of their cultural and historical contexts.
- 'The Soldier' (1914) by 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.
- ‘We Lived Happily During the War’ (2013) by Ilya Kaminsky
- And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
- protested
- but not enough, we opposed them but not
- enough. I was
- in my bed, around my bed America
- was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
- I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
- In the sixth month
- of a disastrous reign in the house of money
- in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
- our great country of money, we (forgive us)
- lived happily during the war.
References:
- Brooke, R. (1914). Poetry Magazine of Verse. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13076/the-soldier
- Kaminsky, I. (2019): Deaf Republic: Poems. Faber & Faber.
✏️ Model Answer
Analysis and Comparison of 'The Soldier' by Rupert Brooke and 'We Lived Happily During the War' by Ilya Kaminsky
War poetry often reflects not only the personal experiences of the poet but also the broader social, cultural, and historical contexts in which the poem is written. Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier (1914) and Ilya Kaminsky’s We Lived Happily During the War (2013) both engage with the theme of war, but their portrayals differ dramatically due to the distinct cultural and historical moments from which they emerge. Brooke’s poem was written during the early stages of World War I, while Kaminsky’s poem was penned in the context of modern wars and their effects on contemporary society, particularly with the lens of a Ukrainian-American poet living through conflict in a modern, capitalist world. This comparison will explore how these poets treat the concept of war and its impact on the individual and society, considering their contrasting cultural and historical contexts.
The Soldier by Rupert Brooke (1914) …