Literature – Page 493 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’

By Dr Oliver Tearle

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) is often considered a war poet, though he died early on in the First World War and never wrote about the gritty realities of fighting which Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Isaac Rosenberg described, nor did he subject the mismanagement of the war to the trenchant analysis that later poets did. ‘The Soldier’ belongs to an earlier stage in the War, when people were overall more optimistic and patriotic: the poem was read aloud in St Paul’s Cathedral in Easter 1915, shortly before Brooke’s death. The poem captures the patriotic mood. Here, then, is ‘The Soldier’, with a little analysis of its meaning and its language.

The Best Rupert Brooke Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) is often known as a war poet, though he died early on during the conflict and didn’t live to see the sort of combat and conditions that later poets of the First World War, such as Wilfred Owen and Isaac Rosenberg, experienced and wrote so powerfully about.

A Short Analysis of John Donne’s ‘Death, Be Not Proud’

A brief summary and analysis of one of John Donne’s classic Holy Sonnets

The sonnet ‘Death, be not proud’ is one of the most famous ‘holy sonnets’ written by John Donne (1572-1631). What follows is the poem, followed by a short introduction to it, including an analysis of its more interesting imagery and language.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Five Fascinating Facts about Noah Webster

Interesting facts about the life and work of the American lexicographer, Noah Webster

1. He was great-uncle to a very famous poet. Noah Webster was the great-uncle of none other than the poet T. S. Eliot. It may not be stretching things too much, in fact, to say that Eliot shared his great-uncle’s fondness for precision, especially when it came to defining words, and even more especially when it came to defining the names we give to important concepts. ‘Can “Education” Be Defined?’ was the title of one of Eliot’s lectures, in 1950. Fittingly, in the same lecture Eliot remarked, ‘people have been very far from agreeing upon a definition of the word “definition”.’ His great-uncle had made definitions his bread-and-butter.

A Short Analysis of Robert Herrick’s ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’

‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’: Herrick’s classic carpe diem poem

‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ has become synonymous with the Latin sentiment expressed by Horace: carpe diem, ‘seize the day’. Don’t tarry or waste time: you get just one life, so grasp the nettle and make the most of it. In his poem ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time’ – often known by that ‘Gather ye rosebuds’ first line – Robert Herrick brilliantly captures the ‘seize the day’ sentiment. Here is the poem, with a short analysis of it:

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.