Edward Thomas

Gone, gone again, May, June, July, And August gone, Again gone by, Not memorable Save that I saw them go, As past the empty quays The rivers flow. And now again, In the harvest rain, The Blenheim oranges Fall grubby from the trees, As when I was young— And when the lost one was here— And when the war began To turn young men to dung. Look at the old house, Outmoded, dignified, Dark and untenanted, With grass growing instead Of the footsteps of life, The friendliness, the strife; In its beds have lain Youth, love, age, and pain: I am something like that; Only I am not dead, Still breathing and interested In the house that is not dark:— I am something like that: Not one pane to reflect the sun, For the schoolboys to throw at— They have broken every one.

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark. Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar; And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk By beech and yew and perishing juniper Down the half precipices of its sides, with roots And rabbit holes for steps. The sun of Winter, The moon of Summer, and all the singing birds Except the missel-thrush that loves juniper, Are quite shut out. But far more ancient and dark The Combe looks since they killed the badger there, Dug him out and gave him to the hounds, That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,— Out of the night, two cocks together crow, Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow: And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand, Heralds of splendour, one at either hand, Each facing each as in a coat of arms: The milkers lace their boots up at the farms.

Mother, the root of this little yellow flower Among the stones has the taste of quinine. Things are strange to-day on the cliff. The sun shines so bright, And the grasshopper works at his sewing-machine So hard. Here’s one on my hand, mother, look; I lie so still. There’s one on your book. But I have something to tell more strange. So leave Your book to the grasshopper, mother dear,— Like a green knight in a dazzling market-place,— And listen now. Can you hear what I hear Far out? Now and then the foam there curls And stretches a white arm out like a girl’s. Fishes and gulls ring no bells. There cannot be A chapel or church between here and Devon, With fishes or gulls ringing its bell,—hark!— Somewhere under the sea or up in heaven. “It’s the bell, my son, out in the bay On the buoy. It does sound sweet to-day.” Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales. I should like to be lying under that foam, Dead, but able to hear the sound of the bell, And certain that you would often come And rest, listening happily. I should be happy if that could be.

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 none to wed.

Seated once by a brook, watching a child Chiefly that paddled, I was thus beguiled. Mellow the blackbird sang and sharp the thrush Not far off in the oak and hazel brush, Unseen. There was a scent like honeycomb From mugwort dull. And down upon the dome Of the stone the cart-horse kicks against so oft A butterfly alighted. From aloft He took the heat of the sun, and from below. On the hot stone he perched contented so, As if never a cart would pass again That way; as if I were the last of men And he the first of insects to have earth And sun together and to know their worth. I was divided between him and the gleam, The motion, and the voices, of the stream, The waters running frizzled over gravel, That never vanish and for ever travel. A grey flycatcher silent on a fence And I sat as if we had been there since The horseman and the horse lying beneath The fir-tree-covered barrow on the heath, The horseman and the horse with silver shoes, Galloped the downs last. All that I could lose I lost. And then the child’s voice raised the dead. “No one’s been here before” was what she said And what I felt, yet never should have found A word for, while I gathered sight and sound.

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 of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing— The sounds that for these fifty years have been. The whisper of the aspens is not drowned, And over lightless pane and footless road, Empty as sky, with every other sound Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode, A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom, In tempest or the night of nightingales, To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room. And it would be the same were no house near. Over all sorts of weather, men, and times, Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear But need not listen, more than to my rhymes. Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves We cannot other than an aspen be That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves, Or so men think who like a different tree.

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 an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more. The blizzard felled the elm whose crest I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole, The ploughman said. “When will they take it away?” “When the war’s over.” So the talk began— One minute and an interval of ten, A minute more and the same interval. “Have you been out?” “No.” “And don’t want to, perhaps?” “If I could only come back again, I should. I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so, I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?” “Yes, a good few. Only two teams work on the farm this year. One of my mates is dead. The second day In France they killed him. It was back in March, The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.” “And I should not have sat here. Everything Would have been different. For it would have been Another world.” “Ay, and a better, though If we could see all all might seem good.” Then The lovers came out of the wood again: The horses started and for the last time I watched the clods crumble and topple over After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

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 less 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.