In “The Solider,” Rupert Brooke uses alliteration, the repetition of identical initial consonant sounds close together, to drive home the profound love he feels for his homeland.

To see an illustration of this, we need look no further than the first three lines of the poem:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England... (Emphasis added).

The repetition of the consonant “f” indicates how important these lines are to the poet and what they represent. An intensely patriotic poem, “The Soldier” is all about love of one's country, and the speaker expresses the conviction that, wherever he dies, even if it's in some remote corner of a foreign field, it will be a part of the England that he loves so dearly.

Further alliteration comes at the end of the first stanza, this time involving the repetition of the “b” consonant:

A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

Once again, a patriotic point is being made. The speaker belongs to the nation; he has been formed and shaped by England to be the man that he is. As with any patriot, he puts his country before himself, emphasizing the degree to which the nation enjoys preeminence over any one individual.

Such an attitude was all too common among those who went to war in 1914. The general consensus was that fighting and dying for one's country was a noble enterprise and that the interests of the nation took precedence over those of the individual.

Brooke uses a number of literary devices in this poem. The first is his choice of a formal structure. This is a sonnet. Once readers recognize this, they can expect a number of other literary devices or specific details to be found in the poem. Standard sonnets have 14 lines, as this poem does. There are a few standard variations on sonnet structure.  One variation is the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. In this form, the first eight lines form one unit (the "octave" or "octet") and the final six lines form a second unit (the "sextet"). So, before you look further, look at this larger structure, and the relationship between these two parts.

After that, look for a regular rhyme scheme ("me" rhymes with "be," "field" with "concealed," and so on): ABABCDCD, etc. There is a regular rhythm. The lines are a specific length: ten syllables, usually in iambic pentameter.

Once you move past structure, there are other devices used. Brooke repeats words within lines ("rich"/"richer") or within the poem ("England"). He personifies the world ("blest by suns of home"). There is imagery throughout.