Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Read online

In ‘seventy-four a year of soldiering

  With the Berkshires, – hoeing and harvesting

  In half the shires where corn and couch will grow.

  His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoe 20

  And reap-hook he liked, or anything to do with trees.

  He fell once from a poplar tall as these:

  The Flying Man they called him in hospital.

  ‘If I flew now, to another world I’d fall.’

  He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitch 25

  With spots of blue that hunted in the ditch.

  Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have paired

  Beneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scared

  Strangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eye

  And trick of shrinking off as he were shy, 30

  Then following close in silence for – for what?

  ‘No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,

  Yet always hunts. Today she nearly had one:

  She would and she wouldn’t. ‘Twas like that. The bad one!

  She’s not much use, but still she’s company, 35

  Though I’m not. She goes everywhere with me.

  So Alton I must reach tonight somehow:

  I’ll get no shakedown with that bedfellow

  From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse tonight

  Than I shall.’ ‘In the trenches.’ ‘Yes, that’s right. 40

  But they’ll be out of that – I hope they be –

  This weather, marching after the enemy.’

  ‘And so I hope. Good luck.’ And there I nodded

  ‘Good-night. You keep straight on.’ Stiffly he plodded;

  And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast, 45

  And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They passed,

  The robin till next day, the man for good,

  Together in the twilight of the wood.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE GYPSY

  A fortnight before Christmas Gypsies were everywhere:

  Vans were drawn up on wastes, women trailed to the fair.

  ‘My gentleman,’ said one, ‘You’ve got a lucky face.’

  ‘And you’ve a luckier,’ I thought, ‘if such a grace

  And impudence in rags are lucky.’ ‘Give a penny 5

  For the poor baby’s sake.’ ‘Indeed I have not any

  Unless you can give change for a sovereign, my dear.’

  ‘Then just half a pipeful of tobacco can you spare?’

  I gave it. With that much victory she laughed content.

  I should have given more, but off and away she went 10

  With her baby and her pink sham flowers to rejoin

  The rest before I could translate to its proper coin

  Gratitude for her grace. And I paid nothing then,

  As I pay nothing now with the dipping of my pen

  For her brother’s music when he drummed the tambourine 15

  And stamped his feet, which made the workmen passing grin,

  While his mouth-organ changed to a rascally Bacchanal dance

  ‘Over the hills and far away’. This and his glance

  Outlasted all the fair, farmer and auctioneer,

  Cheap-jack, balloon-man, drover with crooked stick, and steer, 20

  Pig, turkey, goose, and duck, Christmas corpses to be.

  Not even the kneeling ox had eyes like the Romany.

  That night he peopled for me the hollow wooded land,

  More dark and wild than stormiest heavens, that I searched and scanned

  Like a ghost new-arrived. The gradations of the dark 20

  Were like an underworld of death, but for the spark

  In the Gypsy boy’s black eyes as he played and stamped his tune,

  ‘Over the hills and far away’, and a crescent moon.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  AMBITION

  Unless it was that day I never knew

  Ambition. After a night of frost, before

  The March sun brightened and the South-west blew,

  Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar

  Already, and one was racing straight and high 5

  Alone, shouting like a black warrior

  Challenges and menaces to the wide sky.

  With loud long laughter then a woodpecker

  Ridiculed the sadness of the owl’s last cry.

  And through the valley where all the folk astir 10

  Made only plumes of pearly smoke to tower

  Over dark trees and white meadows happier

  Than was Elysium in that happy hour,

  A train that roared along raised after it

  And carried with it a motionless white bower 15

  Of purest cloud, from end to end close-knit,

  So fair it touched the roar with silence. Time

  Was powerless while that lasted. I could sit

  And think I had made the loveliness of prime,

  Breathed its life into it and were its lord, 20

  And no mind lived save this ‘twixt clouds and rime.

  Omnipotent I was, nor even deplored

  That I did nothing. But the end fell like a bell:

  The bower was scattered; far off the train roared.

  But if this was ambition I cannot tell. 25

  What ‘twas ambition for I know not well.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  PARTING

  The Past is a strange land, most strange.

  Wind blows not there, nor does rain fall:

  If they do, they cannot hurt at all.

  Men of all kinds as equals range

  The soundless fields and streets of it. 5

  Pleasure and pain there have no sting,

  The perished self not suffering

  That lacks all blood and nerve and wit,

  And is in shadow-land a shade.

  Remembered joy and misery 10

  Bring joy to the joyous equally;

  Both sadden the sad. So memory made

  Parting today a double pain:

  First because it was parting; next

  Because the ill it ended vexed 15

  And mocked me from the Past again,

  Not as what had been remedied

  Had I gone on, – not that, oh no!

  But as itself no longer woe;

  Sighs, angry word and look and deed 20

  Being faded: rather a kind of bliss,

  For there spiritualised it lay

  In the perpetual yesterday

  That naught can stir or stain like this.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  HOUSE AND MAN

  One hour: as dim he and his house now look

  As a reflection in a rippling brook,

  While I remember him; but first, his house.

  Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs

  That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles 5

  Part of the squirrels’ track. In all those miles

  Of forest silence and forest murmur, only

  One house – ‘Lonely!’ he said, ‘I wish it were lonely’ –

  Which the trees looked upon from every side,

  And that was his.

  He waved good-bye to hide 10

  A sigh that he converted to a laugh.

  He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half

  Ghost-like, half like a beggar’s rag, clean wrung

  And useless on the briar where it has hung

  Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain. 15

  But why I call back man and house again

  Is that now on a beech-tree’s tip I see

  As then I saw – I at the gate, and he

  In the house darkness, – a magpie veering about,


  A magpie like a weathercock in doubt. 20

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST

  I never had noticed it until

  ‘Twas gone, – the narrow copse

  Where now the woodman lops

  The last of the willows with his bill.

  It was not more than a hedge overgrown. 5

  One meadow’s breadth away

  I passed it day by day.

  Now the soil is bare as a bone,

  And black betwixt two meadows green,

  Though fresh-cut faggot ends 10

  Of hazel make some amends

  With a gleam as if flowers they had been.

  Strange it could have hidden so near!

  And now I see as I look

  That the small winding brook, 15

  A tributary’s tributary, rises there.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  MAY 23

  There never was a finer day,

  And never will be while May is May, –

  The third, and not the last of its kind;

  But though fair and clear the two behind

  Seemed pursued by tempests overpast; 5

  And the morrow with fear that it could not last

  Was spoiled. Today ere the stones were warm

  Five minutes of thunderstorm

  Dashed it with rain, as if to secure,

  By one tear, its beauty the luck to endure. 10

  At midday then along the lane

  Old Jack Noman appeared again,

  Jaunty and old, crooked and tall,

  And stopped and grinned at me over the wall,

  With a cowslip bunch in his button-hole 15

  And one in his cap. Who could say if his roll

  Came from flints in the road, the weather, or ale?

  He was welcome as the nightingale.

  Not an hour of the sun had been wasted on Jack.

  ‘I’ve got my Indian complexion back’ 20

  Said he. He was tanned like a harvester,

  Like his short clay pipe, like the leaf and bur

  That clung to his coat from last night’s bed,

  Like the ploughland crumbling red.

  Fairer flowers were none on the earth 25

  Than his cowslips wet with the dew of their birth,

  Or fresher leaves than the cress in his basket.

  ‘Where did they come from, Jack?’ ‘Don’t ask it,

  And you’ll be told no lies.’ ‘Very well:

  Then I can’t buy.’ ‘I don’t want to sell. 30

  Take them and these flowers, too, free.

  Perhaps you have something to give me?

  Wait till next time. The better the day…

  The Lord couldn’t make a better, I say;

  If he could, he never has done.’ 35

  So off went Jack with his roll-walk-run,

  Leaving his cresses from Oakshott rill

  And his cowslips from Wheatham hill.

  ‘Twas the first day that the midges bit;

  But though they bit me, I was glad of it: 40

  Of the dust in my face, too, I was glad.

  Spring could do nothing to make me sad.

  Bluebells hid all the ruts in the copse,

  The elm seeds lay in the road like hops,

  That fine day, May the twenty-third, 45

  The day Jack Noman disappeared.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE BARN

  They should never have built a barn there, at all –

  Drip, drip, drip! – under that elm tree,

  Though then it was young. Now it is old

  But good, not like the barn and me.

  Tomorrow they cut it down. They will leave 5

  The barn, as I shall be left, maybe.

  What holds it up? ‘Twould not pay to pull down.

  Well, this place has no other antiquity.

  No abbey or castle looks so old

  As this that Job Knight built in ‘54, 10

  Built to keep corn for rats and men.

  Now there’s fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.

  What thatch survives is dung for the grass,

  The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof

  Will not bear a mower to mow it. But 15

  Only fowls have foothold enough.

  Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats

  Making a spiky beard as they chattered

  And whistled and kissed, with heads in air,

  Till they thought of something else that mattered. 20

  But now they cannot find a place,

  Among all those holes, for a nest any more.

  It’s the turn of lesser things, I suppose.

  Once I fancied ‘twas starlings they built it for.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  HOME

  Not the end: but there’s nothing more.

  Sweet Summer and Winter rude

  I have loved, and friendship and love,

  The crowd and solitude:

  But I know them: I weary not; 5

  But all that they mean I know.

  I would go back again home

  Now. Yet how should I go?

  This is my grief. That land,

  My home, I have never seen; 10

  No traveller tells of it,

  However far he has been.

  And could I discover it,

  I fear my happiness there,

  Or my pain, might be dreams of return 15

  Here, to these things that were.

  Remembering ills, though slight

  Yet irremediable,

  Brings a worse, an impurer pang

  Than remembering what was well. 20

  No: I cannot go back,

  And would not if I could.

  Until blindness come, I must wait

  And blink at what is not good.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  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.

  Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest, 5

  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, 10

  But one telling me plain what I escaped

  And others could not, that night, as in I went.

  And salted was my food, and my repose,

  Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice

  Speaking for all who lay under the stars, 15

  Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE CHILD ON THE CLIFFS

  Mother, the root of this little yellow flower

  Among the stones has the taste of quinine.

  Things are strange today 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; 5

  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 10

  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! – 15

  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 today.’

  Sweeter I never heard, mother, no, not in all Wales.

  I should like to be lying under that foam, 20

  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.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE BRIDGE

  I have come a long way today:

  On a strange bridge alone,

  Remembering friends, old friends,

  I rest, without smile or moan,

  As they remember me without smile or moan. 5

  All are behind, the kind

  And the unkind too, no more

  Tonight than a dream. The stream

  Runs softly yet drowns the Past,

  The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the Past. 10

  No traveller has rest more blest

  Than this moment brief between

  Two lives, when the Night’s first lights

  And shades hide what has never been,

  Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have been. 15

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  GOOD-NIGHT

  The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;

  I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;

  Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town