EDWARD THOMAS
(1878–1917)
Contents
The Poetry of Edward Thomas
BRIEF INTRODUCTION: EDWARD THOMAS
The Poems
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Novella
THE HAPPY-GO-LUCKY MORGANS
The Letters
THE LETTERS OF EDWARD THOMAS
INDEX OF LETTERS
The Autobiographies
HOW I BEGAN
THE CHILDHOOD OF EDWARD THOMAS
© Delphi Classics 2013
Version 1
EDWARD THOMAS
By Delphi Classics, 2013
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The Poetry of Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas was born on 3 March, 1878, in 10 Upper Lansdowne Road North, now 14 Lansdowne Gardens, Lambeth, London.
The plaque commemorating the poet’s birth
BRIEF INTRODUCTION: EDWARD THOMAS
Edward Thomas was born of Welsh descent, in Lambeth, London in 1878. He was educated at St Paul’s College and then Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he studied history. He married while still an undergraduate and determined to embark on a literary career, beginning as a book reviewer, reviewing up to fifteen books every week. In time, Thomas was a prolific writer of prose, completing biographies on Richard Jefferies, Swinburne and Keats, as well as working as a moderately successful journalist, whose work concentrated on the image of England and its countryside.
Thomas worked as literary critic for the Daily Chronicle in London and became a close friend of Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies, whose career he almost single-handedly launched. From 1905, Thomas lived with his wife Helen and their family at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks, Kent. He rented to Davies a tiny cottage nearby, and nurtured his writing as best he could. On one occasion, Thomas even had to arrange for the manufacture, by a local wheelwright, of a makeshift wooden leg for Davies.
Thomas often suffered from severe bouts of depression and recurrent psychological breakdowns, feeling creatively repressed by the endless reviews and ill-paid commissions he had to undergo to support himself and his family. Although happier with his writings on countryside that mixed observation, information, literary criticism, self-reflection and portraiture, Thomas still felt that his style was not original enough to merit recognition and so he struggled to find a form that suited him.
Even though Thomas believed that poetry was the highest form of literature and regularly reviewed it, he only became a poet himself at the end of 1914, when living at Steep, East Hampshire. Following a meeting with the American poet Robert Frost, Thomas devoted himself fully to the writing of poetry. From the beginning of his poetic writings, the First World War became a shifting presence in Thomas’ poetry, acting to concentrate his mind on a war-torn vision of England.
His poetry, so he said, acted as the ‘metaphysical counterpart’ to his decision to join the army. After ‘the natural culmination of a long series of moods and thoughts’ he enlisted in 1915 with the Artists’ Rifles as a private. Thomas was sent to Hare Hall Camp at Romford, Essex, where he worked as a map-reading instructor and was promoted to lance-corporal, then full corporal. Given his age, Thomas could have honourably remained in this post throughout the War; however, in September 1916 he began training in the Royal Garrison Artillery and when he was commissioned second lieutenant in November he volunteered for service overseas. Thomas left England for France in January 1917 and served with No. 244 siege battery. On the 9th April Thomas was killed by a shell blast in the first hour of the Battle of Arras at an observation post whilst directing fire.
Thomas wrote no poetry that we know of during his time in France, however his small pocket diary reveals him to be a changed man, an efficient officer and a prolific writer. The poet is buried in Agny military cemetery on the outskirts of Arras. He was survived by his wife Helen and three children, Bronwen, Merfyn and Myfanwy. Thomas did not live to see Poems (1917), published under his pseudonym, Edward Eastaway. Although only functioning as a poet for little over two years, Thomas had created a body of over 140 poems, which have since been recognised as some of the greatest poetic achievements of his era. Thomas’ poems are celebrated for their attention to the English countryside and his telltale colloquial style.
Thomas with his son, 1900
Thomas, 1904
Thomas in 1914, the year when he began to write poetry seriously
An illustration of Thomas enlisting
Thomas in uniform, 1916
UP IN THE WIND
‘I could wring the old thing’s neck that put it here!
A public-house! It may be public for birds,
Squirrels and such-like, ghosts of charcoal-burners
And highwaymen.’ The wild girl laughed. ‘But I
Hate it since I came back from Kennington. 5
I gave up a good place.’ Her Cockney accent
Made her and the house seem wilder by calling up –
Only to be subdued at once by wildness –
The idea of London, there in that forest parlour,
Low and small among the towering beeches 10
And the one bulging butt that’s like a font.
Her eyes flashed up; she shook her hair away
From eyes and mouth, as if to shriek again;
Then sighed back to her scrubbing. While I drank
I might have mused of coaches and highwaymen, 15
Charcoal-burners and life that loves the wild.
For who now used these roads except myself,
A market waggon every other Wednesday,
A solitary tramp, some very fresh one
Ignorant of these eleven houseless miles, 20
A motorist from a distance slowing down
To taste whatever luxury he can
In having North Downs clear behind, South clear before,
And being midway between two railway lines
Far out of sight or sound of them? There are 25
Some houses – down the by-lanes; and a few
Are visible – when their damsons are in bloom.
But the land is wild, and there’s a spirit of wildness
Much older, crying when the stone-curlew yodels
His sea and mountain cry, high up in Spring. 30
He nests in fields where still the gorse is free as
When all was open and common. Common ‘tis named
And calls itself, because the bracken and gorse
Still hold the hedge where plough and scythe have chased them.
Once on a time ‘tis plain that ‘The White Horse’ 35
Stood merely on the border of a waste
Where horse or cart picked its own course afresh.
On all sides then, as now, paths ran to the inn;
And now a farm-track takes you from a gate.
Two roads cross, and not a house in sight 40
Except ‘The White Horse’ in this clump of beeches.
It hides from either road, a field’s breadth back;
And it’s the trees you see, and not the house,
Both near and far, when the clump’s the highest thing
And homely, too, upon a far horizon 45
To one that knows there is
an inn within.
‘‘Twould have been different’ the wild girl shrieked, ‘suppose
That widow had married another blacksmith and
Kept on the business. This parlour was the smithy.
If she had done, there might never have been an inn; 50
And I, in that case, might never have been born.
Years ago, when this was all a wood
And the smith had charcoal-burners for company,
A man from a beech-country in the shires
Came with an engine and a little boy 55
(To feed the engine) to cut up timber here.
It all happened years ago. The smith
Had died, his widow had set up an alehouse –
I could wring the old thing’s neck for thinking of it.
Well, I suppose they fell in love, the widow 60
And my great-uncle that sawed up the timber:
Leastways they married. The little boy stayed on.
He was my father.’ She thought she’d scrub again –
‘I draw the ale and he grows fat’ she muttered –
But only studied the hollows in the bricks 65
And chose among her thoughts in stirring silence.
The clock ticked, and the big saucepan lid
Heaved as the cabbage bubbled, and the girl
Questioned the fire and spoke: ‘My father, he
Took to the land. A mile of it is worth 70
A guinea; for by that time all the trees
Except these few about the house were gone:
That’s all that’s left of the forest unless you count
The bottoms of the charcoal-burners’ fires –
We plough one up at times. Did you ever see 75
Our signboard?’ No. The post and empty frame
I knew. Without them I should not have guessed
The low grey house and its one stack under trees
Was a public-house and not a hermitage.
‘But can that empty frame be any use? 80
Now I should like to see a good white horse
Swing there, a really beautiful white horse,
Galloping one side, being painted on the other.’
‘But would you like to hear it swing all night
And all day? All I ever had to thank 85
The wind for was for blowing the sign down.
Time after time it blew down and I could sleep.
At last they fixed it, and it took a thief
To move it, and we’ve never had another:
It’s lying at the bottom of the pond. 90
But no one’s moved the wood from off the hill
When the wind blows, as if a train were running
The other side, a train that never stops
Or ends. And the linen crackles on the line 95
Like a wood fire rising.’ ‘But if you had the sign
You might draw company. What about Kennington?’
She bent down to her scrubbing with ‘Not me:
Not back to Kennington. Here I was born,
And I’ve a notion on these windy nights 100
Here I shall die. Perhaps I want to die here.
I reckon I shall stay. But I do wish
The road was nearer and the wind farther off,
Or once now and then quite still, though when I die
I’d have it blowing that I might go with it 105
Somewhere distant, where there are trees no more
And I could wake and not know where I was
Nor even wonder if they would roar again.
Look at those calves.’
Between the open door
And the trees two calves were wading in the pond, 110
Grazing the water here and there and thinking,
Sipping and thinking, both happily, neither long.
The water wrinkled, but they sipped and thought,
As careless of the wind as it of us.
‘Look at those calves. Hark at the trees again.’ 115
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
NOVEMBER
November’s days are thirty:
November’s earth is dirty,
Those thirty days, from first to last;
And the prettiest things on ground are the paths
With morning and evening hobnails dinted, 5
With foot and wing-tip overprinted
Or separately charactered,
Of little beast and little bird.
The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads
Make the worst going, the best the woods 10
Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter.
Few care for the mixture of earth and water,
Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,
Straw, feather, all that men scorn,
Pounded up and sodden by flood, 15
Condemned as mud.
But of all the months when earth is greener
Not one has clean skies that are cleaner.
Clean and clear and sweet and cold,
They shine above the earth so old, 20
While the after-tempest cloud
Sails over in silence though winds are loud,
Till the full moon in the east
Looks at the planet in the west
And earth is silent as it is black, 25
Yet not unhappy for its lack.
Up from the dirty earth men stare:
One imagines a refuge there
Above the mud, in the pure bright
Of the cloudless heavenly light: 30
Another loves earth and November more dearly
Because without them, he sees clearly,
The sky would be nothing more to his eye
Than he, in any case, is to the sky;
He loves even the mud whose dyes 35
Renounce all brightness to the skies.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
MARCH
Perhaps tomorrow: however late I’ve patience
After this night following on such a day.
While still my temples ached from the cold burning
Of hail and wind, and still the primroses 5
Torn by the hail were covered up in it,
The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light
And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped,
As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.
But ‘twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled 10
Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the west:
Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost,
And yet ‘twas cold, and though I knew that Spring
Would come again, I knew it had not come,
That it was lost too in those mountains chill. 15
What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet, hail,
Had kept them quiet as the primroses.
They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they sang,
On gates, on ground; they sang while they changed perches
And while they fought, if they remembered to fight: 20
So earnest were they to pack into that hour
Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon
Grew brighter than the clouds. Then ‘twas no time
For singing merely. So they could keep off silence
And night, they cared not what they sang or screamed; 25
Whether ‘twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft;
And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong.
Something they knew – I also, while they sang
And after. Not till night had half its stars
And never a cloud, was I aware of silence 30
Stained with all that hour’s songs, a silence
Saying that Spring returns, perhap
s tomorrow.
List of poems in chronological order
List of poems in alphabetical order
OLD MAN
Old Man, or Lad’s-love, – in the name there’s nothing
To one that knows not Lad’s-love, or Old Man,
The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree,
Growing with rosemary and lavender.
Even to one that knows it well, the names 5
Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is:
At least, what that is clings not to the names
In spite of time. And yet I like the names.
The herb itself I like not, but for certain
I love it, as some day the child will love it 10
Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush
Whenever she goes in or out of the house.
Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling
The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps
Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs 15
Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still
But half as tall as she, though it is as old;
So well she clips it. Not a word she says;
And I can only wonder how much hereafter
She will remember, with that bitter scent, 20
Of garden rows, and ancient damson-trees
Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door,
A low thick bush beside the door, and me
Forbidding her to pick.
As for myself,
Where first I met the bitter scent is lost. 25
I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,
Sniff them and think and sniff again and try
Once more to think what it is I am remembering,
Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,