Rupert Brooke possessed one of the most amazingly sensitive, amazingly sensual poetic minds of the 20th century. Born into a world swiftly sliding into war, torn between highly idealized, romanticized relationships with men and conflicted, often bitter love for women, he expressed his complex emotions and vivid perceptions in verse of startling force, striking sensory intensity, and sometimes sly and biting humor. He left us just under 100 poems before his terribly untimely death of sepsis while serving in the British Navy in World War I.

His war poems made his reputation, particularly "The Soldier" ("there is some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England.") Ironically, his poem fits his own death; he was buried in Greece, fulfilling his own words.