Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Read online

  With you, fair maid:

  A-roving, a-roving, since roving’s been my ruin,

  I’ll go no more a-roving with you, fair maid.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE COMBE

  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 5

  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, 10

  Dug him out and gave him to the hounds,

  That most ancient Briton of English beasts.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE NEW YEAR

  He was the one man I met up in the woods

  That stormy New Year’s morning; and at first sight,

  Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much

  Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,

  Bowed horizontal, was supported equally 5

  By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:

  Thus he rested, far less like a man than

  His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.

  But when I saw it was an old man bent,

  At the same moment came into my mind 10

  The games at which boys bend thus, High-cockolorum,

  Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound

  Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;

  His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise’s;

  He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth 15

  Politely ere I wished him ‘A Happy New Year’,

  And with his head cast upward sideways muttered –

  So far as I could hear through the trees’ roar –

  ‘Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,’

  While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves. 20

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE HOLLOW WOOD

  Out in the sun the goldfinch flits

  Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits

  Above the hollow wood

  Where birds swim like fish –

  Fish that laugh and shriek – 5

  To and fro, far below

  In the pale hollow wood.

  Lichen, ivy, and moss

  Keep evergreen the trees

  That stand half-flayed and dying, 10

  And the dead trees on their knees

  In dog’s-mercury and moss:

  And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops

  Down there as he flits on thistle-tops.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE SOURCE

  All day the air triumphs with its two voices

  Of wind and rain:

  As loud as if in anger it rejoices,

  Drowning the sound of earth

  That gulps and gulps in choked endeavour vain 5

  To swallow the rain.

  Half the night, too, only the wild air speaks

  With wind and rain,

  Till forth the dumb source of the river breaks

  And drowns the rain and wind, 10

  Bellows like a giant bathing in mighty mirth

  The triumph of earth.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE PENNY WHISTLE

  The new moon hangs like an ivory bugle

  In the naked frosty blue;

  And the ghylls of the forest, already blackened

  By Winter, are blackened anew.

  The brooks that cut up and increase the forest, 5

  As if they had never known

  The sun, are roaring with black hollow voices

  Betwixt rage and a moan.

  But still the caravan-hut by the hollies

  Like a kingfisher gleams between: 10

  Round the mossed old hearths of the charcoal-burners

  First primroses ask to be seen.

  The charcoal-burners are black, but their linen

  Blows white on the line;

  And white the letter the girl is reading 15

  Under that crescent fine;

  And her brother who hides apart in a thicket,

  Slowly and surely playing

  On a whistle an olden nursery melody,

  Says far more than I am saying. 20

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  A PRIVATE

  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, 5

  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.

  List of poems in chronological order

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  SNOW

  In the gloom of whiteness,

  In the great silence of snow,

  A child was sighing

  And bitterly saying: ‘Oh, 5

  They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,

  The down is fluttering from her breast.’

  And still it fell through that dusky brightness

  On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  ADLESTROP

  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. 5

  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, 10

  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 15

  Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  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

  Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon 5

  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

  And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence. 10

  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

  And fifes were playing ‘The British Grenadiers’. 15

  The men, the music piercing that solitude

  And silence, told me truths I had not
dreamed,

  And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  OVER THE HILLS

  Often and often it came back again

  To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge

  To a new country, the path I had to find

  By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge,

  The pack of scarlet clouds running across 5

  The harvest evening that seemed endless then

  And after, and the inn where all were kind,

  All were strangers. I did not know my loss

  Till one day twelve months later suddenly

  I leaned upon my spade and saw it all, 10

  Though far beyond the sky-line. It became

  Almost a habit through the year for me

  To lean and see it and think to do the same

  Again for two days and a night. Recall

  Was vain: no more could the restless brook 15

  Ever turn back and climb the waterfall

  To the lake that rests and stirs not in its nook,

  As in the hollow of the collar-bone

  Under the mountain’s head of rush and stone.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE LOFTY SKY

  Today I want the sky,

  The tops of the high hills,

  Above the last man’s house,

  His hedges, and his cows,

  Where, if I will, I look 5

  Down even on sheep and rook,

  And of all things that move

  See buzzards only above: –

  Past all trees, past furze

  And thorn, where naught deters 10

  The desire of the eye

  For sky, nothing but sky.

  I sicken of the woods

  And all the multitudes

  Of hedge-trees. They are no more 15

  Than weeds upon this floor

  Of the river of air

  Leagues deep, leagues wide, where

  I am like a fish that lives

  In weeds and mud and gives 20

  What’s above him no thought.

  I might be a tench for aught

  That I can do today

  Down on the wealden clay.

  Even the tench has days 25

  When he floats up and plays

  Among the lily leaves

  And sees the sky, or grieves

  Not if he nothing sees:

  While I, I know that trees 30

  Under that lofty sky

  Are weeds, fields mud, and I

  Would arise and go far

  To where the lilies are.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE CUCKOO

  That’s the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.

  When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know

  Too well the year when first I failed to hear it –

  It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep ‘Ho! Ho!’

  Ten times with an angry voice he shouted 5

  ‘Ho! Ho!’ but not in anger, for that was his way.

  He died that Summer, and that is how I remember

  The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me saying, ‘Nay.’

  And now, as you said, ‘There it is!’ I was hearing

  Not the cuckoo at all, but my man’s ‘Ho! Ho!’ instead. 10

  And I think that even if I could lose my deafness

  The cuckoo’s note would be drowned by the voice of my dead.

  List of poems in chronological order

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  SWEDES

  They have taken the gable from the roof of clay

  On the long swede pile. They have let in the sun

  To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds

  Unsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeous

  At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips 5

  Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,

  A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh’s tomb

  And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,

  God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,

  Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold. 10

  But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.

  This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.

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  THE UNKNOWN BIRD

  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 5

  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, 10

  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, 15

  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 20

  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 25

  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, 30

  Now straightway, if I think of it, become

  Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

  List of poems in chronological order

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  BEAUTY

  What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,

  No man, woman, or child alive could please

  Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh

  Because I sit and frame an epitaph –

  ‘Here lies all that no one loved of him 5

  And that loved no one.’ Then in a trice that whim

  Has wearied. But, though I am like a river

  At fall of evening while it seems that never

  Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while

  Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, 10

  This heart, some fraction of me, happily

  Floats through the window even now to a tree

  Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,

  Not like a pewit that returns to wail

  For something it has lost, but like a dove 15

  That slants unswerving to its home and love.

  There I find my rest, and through the dusk air

  Flies what yet lives in me. Beauty is there.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE MILL-POND

  The sun blazed while the thunder yet

  Added a boom:

  A wagtail flickered bright over

  The mill-pond’s gloom:

  Less than the cooing in the alder 5

  Isles of the pool

  Sounded the thunder through that plunge

  Of waters cool.

  Scar
ed starlings on the aspen tip

  Past the black mill 10

  Outchattered the stream and the next roar

  Far on the hill.

  As my feet dangling teased the foam

  That slid below

  A girl came out. ‘Take care!’ she said – 15

  Ages ago.

  She startled me, standing quite close

  Dressed all in white:

  Ages ago I was angry till

  She passed from sight. 20

  Then the storm burst, and as I crouched

  To shelter, how

  Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed,

  As she does now!

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  MAN AND DOG

  ‘‘Twill take some getting.’ ‘Sir, I think ‘twill so.’

  The old man stared up at the mistletoe

  That hung too high in the poplar’s crest for plunder

  Of any climber, though not for kissing under:

  Then he went on against the north-east wind – 5

  Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned,

  Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat, –

  Towards Alton, ten miles off. And he had not

  Done less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks.

  ‘Twere best, if he had had ‘a money-box’, 10

  To have waited there till the sheep cleared a field

  For what a half-week’s flint-picking would yield.

  His mind was running on the work he had done

  Since he left Christchurch in the New Forest, one

  Spring in the ‘seventies, – navvying on dock and line 15

  From Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne, –