Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Read online

  In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.

  But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets 5

  That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,

  Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes

  A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king

  Among man, beast, machine, bird, child, and the ghost

  That in the echo lives and with the echo dies. 10

  The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I am not lost;

  Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers’ eyes.

  Never again, perhaps, after tomorrow, shall

  I see these homely streets, these church windows alight,

  Not a man or woman or child among them all: 15

  But it is All Friends’ Night, a traveller’s good-night.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  BUT THESE THINGS ALSO

  But these things also are Spring’s –

  On banks by the roadside the grass

  Long-dead that is greyer now

  Than all the Winter it was;

  The shell of a little snail bleached 5

  In the grass; chip of flint, and mite

  Of chalk; and the small birds’ dung

  In splashes of purest white:

  All the white things a man mistakes

  For earliest violets 10

  Who seeks through Winter’s ruins

  Something to pay Winter’s debts,

  While the North blows, and starling flocks

  By chattering on and on

  Keep their spirits up in the mist, 15

  And Spring’s here, Winter’s not gone.

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  THE NEW HOUSE

  Now first, as I shut the door,

  I was alone

  In the new house; and the wind

  Began to moan.

  Old at once was the house, 5

  And I was old;

  My ears were teased with the dread

  Of what was foretold,

  Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;

  Sad days when the sun 10

  Shone in vain: old griefs, and griefs

  Not yet begun.

  All was foretold me; naught

  Could I foresee;

  But I learnt how the wind would sound 15

  After these things should be.

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  THE BARN AND THE DOWN

  It stood in the sunset sky

  Like the straight-backed down,

  Many a time – the barn

  At the edge of the town,

  So huge and dark that it seemed 5

  It was the hill

  Till the gable’s precipice proved

  It impossible.

  Then the great down in the west

  Grew into sight, 10

  A barn stored full to the ridge

  With black of night;

  And the barn fell to a barn

  Or even less

  Before critical eyes and its own 15

  Late mightiness.

  But far down and near barn and I

  Since then have smiled,

  Having seen my new cautiousness

  By itself beguiled 20

  To disdain what seemed the barn

  Till a few steps changed

  It past all doubt to the down;

  So the barn was avenged.

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  SOWING

  It was a perfect day

  For sowing; just

  As sweet and dry was the ground

  As tobacco-dust.

  I tasted deep the hour 5

  Between the far

  Owl’s chuckling first soft cry

  And the first star.

  A long stretched hour it was;

  Nothing undone 10

  Remained; the early seeds

  All safely sown.

  And now, hark at the rain,

  Windless and light,

  Half a kiss, half a tear, 15

  Saying good-night.

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  MARCH THE THIRD

  Here again (she said) is March the third

  And twelve hours singing for the bird

  ‘Twixt dawn and dusk, from half-past six

  To half-past six, never unheard.

  ‘Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end 5

  When the birds do. I think they blend

  Now better than they will when passed

  Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.

  Or do all mark, and none dares say,

  How it may shift and long delay, 10

  Somewhere before the first of Spring,

  But never fails, this singing day?

  And when it falls on Sunday, bells

  Are a wild natural voice that dwells

  On hillsides; but the birds’ songs have 15

  The holiness gone from the bells.

  This day unpromised is more dear

  Than all the named days of the year

  When seasonable sweets come in,

  Because we know how lucky we are. 20

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  TWO PEWITS

  Under the after-sunset sky

  Two pewits sport and cry,

  More white than is the moon on high

  Riding the dark surge silently;

  More black than earth. Their cry 5

  Is the one sound under the sky.

  They alone move, now low, now high,

  And merrily they cry

  To the mischievous Spring sky,

  Plunging earthward, tossing high, 10

  Over the ghost who wonders why

  So merrily they cry and fly,

  Nor choose ‘twixt earth and sky,

  While the moon’s quarter silently

  Rides, and earth rests as silently. 15

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  WILL YOU COME?

  Will you come?

  Will you come?

  Will you ride

  So late

  At my side? 5

  O, will you come?

  Will you come?

  Will you come

  If the night

  Has a moon, 10

  Full and bright?

  O, will you come?

  Would you come?

  Would you come

  If the noon 15

  Gave light,

  Not the moon?

  Beautiful, would you come?

  Would you have come?

  Would you have come 20

  Without scorning,

  Had it been

  Still morning?

  Beloved, would you have come?

  If you come, 25

  Haste and come.

  Owls have cried;

  It grows dark

  To ride.

  Beloved, beautiful, come. 30

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  THE PATH

  Running along a bank, a parapet

  That saves from the precipitous wood below

  The level road, there is a path. It serves

  Children for looking down the long smooth steep,

  Between the legs of beech and yew, to where 5

  A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women

  Content themselves with the road and what they see

  Over the bank, and what the children tell.

  The path, winding like silver, trickles on,

  Border
ed and even invaded by thinnest moss 10

  That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk

  With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.

  The children wear it. They have flattened the bank

  On top, and silvered it between the moss

  With the current of their feet, year after year. 15

  But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.

  To see a child is rare there, and the eye

  Has but the road, the wood that overhangs

  And underyawns it, and the path that looks

  As if it led on to some legendary 20

  Or fancied place where men have wished to go

  And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

  List of poems in chronological order

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  THE WASP TRAP

  This moonlight makes

  The lovely lovelier

  Than ever before lakes

  And meadows were.

  And yet they are not, 5

  Though this their hour is, more

  Lovely than things that were not

  Lovely before.

  Nothing on earth,

  And in the heavens no star, 10

  For pure brightness is worth

  More than that jar,

  For wasps meant, now

  A star – long may it swing

  From the dead apple-bough, 15

  So glistening.

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  A TALE

  There once the walls

  Of the ruined cottage stood.

  The periwinkle crawls

  With flowers in its hair into the wood.

  In flowerless hours 5

  Never will the bank fail,

  With everlasting flowers

  On fragments of blue plates, to tell the tale.

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  WIND AND MIST

  They met inside the gateway that gives the view,

  A hollow land as vast as heaven. ‘It is

  A pleasant day, sir.’ ‘A very pleasant day.’

  ‘And what a view here. If you like angled fields

  Of grass and grain bounded by oak and thorn, 5

  Here is a league. Had we with Germany

  To play upon this board it could not be

  More dear than April has made it with a smile.

  The fields beyond that league close in together

  And merge, even as our days into the past, 10

  Into one wood that has a shining pane

  Of water. Then the hills of the horizon –

  That is how I should make hills had I to show

  One who would never see them what hills were like.’

  ‘Yes. Sixty miles of South Downs at one glance. 15

  Sometimes a man feels proud of them, as if

  He had just created them with one mighty thought.’

  ‘That house, though modern, could not be better planned

  For its position. I never liked a new

  House better. Could you tell me who lives in it?’ 20

  ‘No one.’ ‘Ah – and I was peopling all

  Those windows on the south with happy eyes,

  The terrace under them with happy feet;

  Girls – ‘ ‘Sir, I know. I know. I have seen that house

  Through mist look lovely as a castle in Spain, 25

  And airier. I have thought: “‘Twere happy there

  To live.” And I have laughed at that

  Because I lived there then.’ ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘Yes, with my furniture and family

  Still in it, I, knowing every nook of it 30

  And loving none, and in fact hating it.’

  ‘Dear me! How could that be? But pardon me.’

  ‘No offence. Doubtless the house was not to blame,

  But the eye watching from those windows saw,

  Many a day, day after day, mist – mist 35

  Like chaos surging back – and felt itself

  Alone in all the world, marooned alone.

  We lived in clouds, on a cliff’s edge almost

  (You see), and if clouds went, the visible earth

  Lay too far off beneath and like a cloud. 40

  I did not know it was the earth I loved

  Until I tried to live there in the clouds

  And the earth turned to cloud.’ ‘You had a garden

  Of flint and clay, too.’ ‘True; that was real enough.

  The flint was the one crop that never failed. 45

  The clay first broke my heart, and then my back;

  And the back heals not. There were other things

  Real, too. In that room at the gable a child

  Was born while the wind chilled a summer dawn:

  Never looked grey mind on a greyer one 50

  Than when the child’s cry broke above the groans.’

  ‘I hope they were both spared.’ ‘They were. Oh yes.

  But flint and clay and childbirth were too real

  For this cloud castle. I had forgot the wind.

  Pray do not let me get on to the wind. 55

  You would not understand about the wind.

  It is my subject, and compared with me

  Those who have always lived on the firm ground

  Are quite unreal in this matter of the wind.

  There were whole days and nights when the wind and I 60

  Between us shared the world, and the wind ruled

  And I obeyed it and forgot the mist.

  My past and the past of the world were in the wind.

  Now you will say that though you understand

  And feel for me, and so on, you yourself 65

  Would find it different. You are all like that

  If once you stand here free from wind and mist:

  I might as well be talking to wind and mist.

  You would believe the house-agent’s young man

  Who gives no heed to anything I say. 70

  Good morning. But one word. I want to admit

  That I would try the house once more, if I could;

  As I should like to try being young again.’

  List of poems in chronological order

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  A GENTLEMAN

  ‘He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury

  Can’t give him more than he undoubtedly

  Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!

  A lady-killer! Hanging’s too good by half

  For such as he.’ So said the stranger, one 5

  With crimes yet undiscovered or undone.

  But at the inn the Gypsy dame began:

  ‘Now he was what I call a gentleman.

  He went along with Carrie, and when she

  Had a baby he paid up so readily 10

  His half a crown. Just like him. A crown’d have been

  More like him. For I never knew him mean.

  Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!

  Last time we met he said if me and Joe

  Was anywhere near we must be sure and call. 15

  He put his arms around our Amos all

  As if he were his own son. I pray God

  Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod.’

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  LOB

  At hawthorn-time in Wiltshire travelling

  In search of something chance would never bring,

  An old man’s face, by life and weather cut

  And coloured, – rough, brown, sweet as any nut, –

  A land face, sea-blue-eyed, – hung in my mind 5

  When I had left him many a mile behind.

  All he said was: ‘Nobody can’t stop ‘ee. It’s

  A footpath, right en
ough. You see those bits

  Of mounds – that’s where they opened up the barrows

  Sixty years since, while I was scaring sparrows. 10

  They thought as there was something to find there,

  But couldn’t find it, by digging, anywhere.’

  To turn back then and seek him, where was the use?

  There were three Manningfords, – Abbots, Bohun, and Bruce:

  And whether Alton, not Manningford, it was, 15

  My memory could not decide, because

  There was both Alton Barnes and Alton Priors.

  All had their churches, graveyards, farms, and byres,

  Lurking to one side up the paths and lanes,

  Seldom well seen except by aeroplanes; 20

  And when bells rang, or pigs squealed, or cocks crowed,

  Then only heard. Ages ago the road

  Approached. The people stood and looked and turned,

  Nor asked it to come nearer, nor yet learned

  To move out there and dwell in all men’s dust. 25

  And yet withal they shot the weathercock, just

  Because ‘twas he crowed out of tune, they said:

  So now the copper weathercock is dead.

  If they had reaped their dandelions and sold

  Them fairly, they could have afforded gold. 30

  Many years passed, and I went back again

  Among those villages, and looked for men

  Who might have known my ancient. He himself

  Had long been dead or laid upon the shelf,

  I thought. One man I asked about him roared 35

  At my description: ‘‘Tis old Bottlesford

  He means, Bill.’ But another said: ‘Of course,

  It was Jack Button up at the White Horse.

  He’s dead, sir, these three years.’ This lasted till

  A girl proposed Walker of Walker’s Hill, 40