Edward Thomas

Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard If others sang; but others never sang In the great beech-wood all that May and June. No one saw him: I alone could hear him Though many listened. Was it but four years Ago? or five? He never came again. Oftenest when I heard him I was alone, Nor could I ever make another hear. La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off— As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world, As if the bird or I were in a dream. Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still He sounded. All the proof is—I told men What I had heard. I never knew a voice, Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told The naturalists; but neither had they heard Anything like the notes that did so haunt me, I had them clear by heart and have them still. Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet: Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say That it was one or other, but if sad 'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off For me to taste it. But I cannot tell If truly never anything but fair The days were when he sang, as now they seem. This surely I know, that I who listened then, Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering A heavy body and a heavy heart, Now straightway, if I think of it, become Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

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 covers The print of last night’s lovers— Scatter it, scatter it! While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth newborn, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars; Arise, arise!

When Winter's ahead, What can you read in November That you read in April When Winter's dead? I hear the thrush, and I see Him alone at the end of the lane Near the bare poplar's tip, Singing continuously. Is it more that you know Than that, even as in April, So in November, Winter is gone that must go? Or is all your lore Not to call November November, And April April, And Winter Winter—no more? But I know the months all, And their sweet names, April, May and June and October, As you call and call I must remember What died into April And consider what will be born Of a fair November; And April I love for what It was born of, and November For what it will die in, What they are and what they are not, While you love what is kind, What you can sing in And love and forget in All that's ahead and behind.

This is no case of petty right or wrong That politicians or philosophers Can judge. I hate not Germans, nor grow hot With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers. Beside my hate for one fat patriot My hatred of the Kaiser is love true:— A kind of god he is, banging a gong. But I have not to choose between the two, Or between justice and injustice. Dinned With war and argument I read no more Than in the storm smoking along the wind Athwart the wood. Two witches' cauldrons roar. From one the weather shall rise clear and gay; Out of the other an England beautiful And like her mother that died yesterday.

The sun used to shine while we two walked Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted Each night. We never disagreed Which gate to rest on. The to be And the late past we gave small heed. We turned from men or poetry To rumours of the war remote Only till both stood disinclined For aught but the yellow flavorous coat Of an apple wasps had undermined; Or a sentry of dark betonies, The stateliest of small flowers on earth, At the forest verge; or crocuses Pale purple as if they had their birth In sunless Hades fields. The war Came back to mind with the moonrise Which soldiers in the east afar Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes Could as well imagine the Crusades Or Caesar's battles. Everything To faintness like those rumours fade— Like the brook's water glittering Under the moonlight—like those walks Now—like us two that took them, and The fallen apples, all the talks And silence—like memory's sand When the tide covers it late or soon, And other men through other flowers In those fields under the same moon Go talking and have easy hours.

The sorrow of true love is a great sorrow And true love parting blackens a bright morrow: Yet almost they equal joys, since their despair Is but hope blinded by its tears, and clear Above the storm the heavens wait to be seen. But greater sorrow from less love has been That can mistake lack of despair for hope And knows not tempest and the perfect scope Of summer, but a frozen drizzle perpetual Of drops that from remorse and pity fall And cannot ever shine in the sun or thaw, Removed eternally from the sun’s law.

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 hilltop by the finger-post; The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft. I read the sign. Which way shall I go? A voice says: You would not have doubted so At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born. One hazel lost a leaf of gold From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told The other he wished to know what ’twould be To be sixty by this same post. “You shall see,” He laughed—and I had to join his laughter— “You shall see; but either before or after, Whatever happens, it must befall, A mouthful of earth to remedy all Regrets and wishes shall freely be given; And if there be a flaw in that heaven ’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be To be here or anywhere talking to me, No matter what the weather, on earth, At any age between death and birth, To see what day or night can be, The sun and the frost, the land and the sea, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring,— With a poor man of any sort, down to a king, Standing upright out in the air Wondering where he shall journey, O where?”

I love roads: The goddesses that dwell Far along invisible Are my favorite gods. Roads go on While we forget, and are Forgotten like a star That shoots and is gone. On this earth 'tis sure We men have not made Anything that doth fade So soon, so long endure: The hill road wet with rain In the sun would not gleam Like a winding stream If we trod it not again. They are lonely While we sleep, lonelier For lack of the traveller Who is now a dream only. From dawn's twilight And all the clouds like sheep On the mountains of sleep They wind into the night. The next turn may reveal Heaven: upon the crest The close pine clump, at rest Ancl black, may Hell conceal. Often footsore, never Yet of the road I weary, Though long and steep and dreary, As it winds on for ever. Helen of the roads, The mountain ways of Wales And the Mabinogion tales, Is one of the true gods, Abiding in the trees, The threes and fours so wise, The larger companies, That by the roadside be, And beneath the rafter Else uninhabited Excepting by the dead; And it is her laughter At morn and night I hear When the thrush cock sings Bright irrelevant things, And when the chanticleer Calls back to their own night Troops that make loneliness With their light footsteps’ press, As Helen’s own are light. Now all roads lead to France And heavy is the tread Of the living; but the dead Returning lightly dance: Whatever the road bring To me or take from me, They keep me company With their pattering, Crowding the solitude Of the loops over the downs, Hushing the roar of towns and their brief multitude.

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 cleaner than I have been Since I was born into solitude. Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon: But here I pray that none whom once I loved Is dying tonight or lying still awake Solitary, listening to the rain, Either in pain or thus in sympathy Helpless among the living and the dead, Like a cold water among broken reeds, Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff, Like me who have no love which this wild rain Has not dissolved except the love of death, If love it be towards what is perfect and Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frosty night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: 'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he, 'I slept.' None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.