Edward Thomas
Beauty
WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph
The Path
RUNNING along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of
When First I Came Here
WHEN first I came here I had hope, Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat My heart at the sight of the tall slope Or grass and yews, as if my feet Only
Celandine
Thinking of her had saddened me at first, Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, A living thing, not what before I nursed, The
A Private
This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: “At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,” said he, “I slept.” None knew
If I Should Ever By Chance
IF I should ever by chance grow rich I’ll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch, Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater, And let them all to my eldest daughter. The rent I shall ask of her will
The Owl
DOWNHILL I came, hungry, and yet not starved, Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the north wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Snow
In the gloom of whiteness, In the great silence of snow, A child was sighing And bitterly saying: “Oh, They have killed a white bird up there on her nest, The down is fluttering
Lights Out
I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest where all must lose Their way, however straight, Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose. Many a road and track That,
Aspens
All day and night, save winter, every weather, Above the inn, the smithy and the shop, The aspens at the cross-roads talk together Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top. Out
Thaw
OVER the land half freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed, And saw from elm-tops, delicate as a flower of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass.
Sowing
IT was a perfect day For sowing; just As sweet and dry was the ground As tobacco-dust. I tasted deep the hour Between the far Owl’s chuckling first soft cry And the first star.
No One So Much As You
No one so much as you Loves this my clay, Or would lament as you Its dying day. You know me through and through Though I have not told, And though with what you
The New House
NOW first, as I shut the door, I was alone In the new house; and the wind Began to moan. Old at once was the house, And I was old; My ears were teased
A Cat
She had a name among the children; But no one loved though someone owned Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime And had her kittens duly drowned. In Spring, nevertheless, this cat Ate