After yesterday’s sombre dialogue by Edward Thomas, here is a sunnier memento of that fine poet, killed at Arras a hundred years ago.
Adlestrop, set in the idyllic southern countryside, is probably the most popular of his poems. The other short ones also bear Thomas’s hallmarks.
ADLESTROP
Yes, I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
~
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the name
~
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
~
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
TALL NETTLES
Tall nettles cover up, as they have done
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
~
The corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any bloom upon a flower
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.
IN MEMORIAM [EASTER 1915]
The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.
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