PJ Harvey live session: How I wrote ... The Last Living Rose

This song from her album Let England Shake makes me think about my complicated relationship with England: the place of my birth and where l have felt the most unrooted. It therefore relates to The Last of England and my temporary sculpture The Last of …..

It also reminds me of Donovan’s Universal Soldier (http://youtu.be/G9-49abv3l8) and The War Drags On which we studied at school together with The Soldier written by Rupert Brooke, which we learnt by heart. Here is the first verse:

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.

The whole poem can be read at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15695

1 Notes/ Hide

  1. nickwhittle posted this