When news broke of Rupert Brooke’s death in April 1915 “The Times” published an unrestrained eulogy. Both poems are concerned with possible futures, but treat the subject in very different ways. How do you think Brooke’s circumstances on the ship may have influenced the tone of this poem? Consider the style of ‘The Soldier’ by comparison and note the differences. He died just over a week later of septicemia, or blood poisoning. This poem was Brooke’s last, written on board the ship Grantully Castle as it transported soldiers through the Aegean Sea. However, how it will happen remains a mystery – ‘soon to die / To other ghosts-this one, or that, or I.’ The final line is almost fatalistic, as Brooke resigns himself to the thought that death is coming. The images of ‘ghosts’ are of course associated with death and suggest an inevitability to their fate. The friendship that Brooke observes on the ship will ‘soon be broken / Thought little of, pashed, scattered…’ The mood is eerie and the final stanza feels like a dream or vision, as Brooke writes about seeing his friends like ‘coloured shadows’ and ‘strange ghosts’.
![scattered fragments meaning scattered fragments meaning](http://www.sheppeyfossils.com/images/shark_bits/Striatalamia_macrota_jaw.jpg)
In ‘Fragment’, Brooke is contemplating the friendship of the soldiers around him and their possible futures.