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

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

The Cherry Trees

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding, On the old road where all that passed are dead, Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding This early May morn when there is

The Trumpet

Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that

The Glory

The glory of the beauty of the morning, – The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew; The blackbird that has found it, and the dove That tempts me on to something sweeter than love;

The Lane

Some day, I think, there will be people enough In Froxfield to pick all the blackberries Out of the hedges of Green Lane, the straight Broad lane where now September hides herself In bracken

The Word

There are so many things I have forgot, That once were much to me, or that were not, All lost, as is a childless woman’s child And its child’s children, in the undefiled Abyss

The Manor Farm

THE rock-like mud unfroze a little, and rills Ran and sparkled down each side of the road Under the catkins wagging in the hedge. But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the

Like the Touch of Rain

Like the touch of rain she was On a man’s flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise: With the love of the storm he burns,

Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me Remembering again that I shall die And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks For washing me

October

The green elm with the one great bough of gold Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white, Harebell and scabious and tormentil, That blackberry

In Memoriam

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.

Words

Out of us all That make rhymes Will you choose Sometimes – As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through – Choose

As the Team's Head – Brass

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed the angle of the fallow, and Watched the

Old Man

Old Man, or Lads-Love, – in the name there’s nothing To one that knows not Lads-Love, or Old Man, The hoar green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to

The Dark Forest

Dark is the forest and deep, and overhead Hang stars like seeds of light In vain, though not since they were sown was bred Anything more bright. And evermore mighty multitudes ride About, nor

The Sign-Post

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy, And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry, Rough, long grasses keep white with frost At the hill-top by the finger-post; The smoke of the

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. This

The Long Small Room

THE long small room that showed willows in the west Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled, Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed What need or accident made them so

Bob's Lane

Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses. He himself was like a cob And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. For the life in them

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