If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
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1956 / VOICES FROM WORLD WAR 1
5
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
10And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the Eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given, Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven. 1914 1915
EDWARD THOMAS 1878-1917
Edward Thomas was born of Welsh parents in London and was educated there and at Lincoln College, Oxford, which he left with a wife, a baby, and high literary ambitions. Despite his chronic depression, which became more marked over the difficult years that followed, he reviewed up to fifteen books a week, published thirty books between 1897 and 1917, and during those twenty years edited sixteen anthologies and editions. His great gifts as a literary critic appeared to best advantage in his reviewing of poetry, and he was the first to salute new stars in the literary firmament such as Robert Frost and Ezra Pound.
Although he had long been conscientiously reviewing poetry, which he regarded as the highest form of literature, he apparently made no serious attempt to write poems until the autumn of 1914. Then, under the stress of deciding whether or not to enlist, poems began to pour out of him: five between December 3 and 7, and ten more before the end of the month. His friend Frost offered to find him work in the United States, but feelings of patriotism, and the attraction of a salary that would support his growing family, led him to enlist in July 1915. His awareness of the natural world, its richness and beauty, was then intensified by a sense of impending loss and the certainty of death?his own and others'. In the long sentences that make up his verse, he ruminates with great delicacy on beauty and nature, but he also demonstrates an unsentimental toughness. In 'Rain,' for example, he compares the dead to 'Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff.' As violence to the natural order of things, war indirectly but persistently shadows Thomas's poems. In January 1917 he was sent to the Western Front and, on Easter Monday, was killed by a shell blast.
Adlestrop1
Yes, I remember Adlestrop? The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.
I. A village in Gloucestershire.
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THOMAS: THE OWL / 1957
5 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,
10 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, 15 Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Jan. 1915 1917
Tears
It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen? Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall?that day When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out But still all equals in their rage of gladness
5 Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun And once bore hops: and on that other day When I stepped out from the double-shadowed Tower Into an April morning, stirring and sweet
io And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence. A mightier charm than any in the Tower Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard, Soldiers in line, young English countrymen, Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics. Drums
is And fifes were playing 'The British Grenadiers.'1 The men, the music piercing that solitude And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed, And have forgotten since their beauty passed.
Jan.1915 1917
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.
1. Famous British marching song about the Brigade of Guards, an elite infantry unit.
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1958 / VOICES FROM WORLD WAR 1
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I. All of the night was quite barred out except An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment, But one telling me plain what I escaped And others could not, that night, as in 1 went.
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