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 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.
Out in the dark over the snow
The fallow fawns invisible go
With the fallow doe;
And the winds blow
Fast as the stars are slow.
Stealthily the dark haunts round
And, when a lamp goes, without sound
At a swifter bound
Than the swiftest hound,
Arrives, and all else is drowned;
And I and star and wind and deer,
Are in the dark together—near,
Yet far—and fear
Drums on my ear
In that sage company drear.
How weak and little is the light,
All the universe of sight,
Love and delight,
Before the might,
If you love it not, of night.
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 and blackberry, harebell and dwarf gorse.
To-day, where yesterday a hundred sheep
Were nibbling, halcyon bells shake to the sway
Of waters that no vessel ever sailed …
It is a kind of spring: the chaffinch tries
His song. For heat it is like summer too.
This might be winter’s quiet. While the glint
Of hollies dark in the swollen hedge lasts—
One mile—and those bells ring, little I know
Or heed if time be still the same, until
The lane ends and once more all is the same.
By the Ford at the town’s edge
Horse and carter rest:
The carter smokes on the bridge
Watching the water press in swathes about his horse’s chest.
From the inn one watches, too,
In the room for visitors
That has no fire, but a view
And many cases of stuffed fish, vermin, and kingfishers.
The author’s birthday. ↩
Poetry
was published between 1916 and 1927 by
Edward Thomas.
Lance Linimon
sponsored the production of this ebook for
Standard Ebooks.
It was produced by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on transcriptions produced in 2007 by
Lewis Jones
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from
Google Books.
The cover page is adapted from
Landscape,
a painting completed circa 1850 by
John Middleton.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
February 14, 2025, 7:14 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/edward-thomas/poetry.
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May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.
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