Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Read online

  ‘Old Adam Walker. Adam’s Point you’ll see

  Marked on the maps.’

  ‘That was her roguery,’

  The next man said. He was a squire’s son

  Who loved wild bird and beast, and dog and gun

  For killing them. He had loved them from his birth, 45

  One with another, as he loved the earth.

  ‘The man may be like Button, or Walker, or

  Like Bottlesford, that you want, but far more

  He sounds like one I saw when I was a child.

  I could almost swear to him. The man was wild 50

  And wandered. His home was where he was free.

  Everybody has met one such man as he.

  Does he keep clear old paths that no one uses

  But once a life-time when he loves or muses?

  He is English as this gate, these flowers, this mire. 55

  And when at eight years old Lob-lie-by-the-fire

  Came in my books, this was the man I saw.

  He has been in England as long as dove and daw,

  Calling the wild cherry tree the merry tree,

  The rose campion Bridget-in-her-bravery; 60

  And in a tender mood he, as I guess,

  Christened one flower Love-in-idleness,

  And while he walked from Exeter to Leeds

  One April called all cuckoo-flowers Milkmaids.

  From him old herbal Gerard learnt, as a boy, 65

  To name wild clematis the Traveller’s-joy.

  Our blackbirds sang no English till his ear

  Told him they called his Jan Toy “Pretty dear”.

  (She was Jan Toy the Lucky, who, having lost

  A shilling, and found a penny loaf, rejoiced.) 70

  For reasons of his own to him the wren

  Is Jenny Pooter. Before all other men

  ‘Twas he first called the Hog’s Back the Hog’s Back.

  That Mother Dunch’s Buttocks should not lack

  Their name was his care. He too could explain 75

  Totteridge and Totterdown and Juggler’s Lane:

  He knows, if anyone. Why Tumbling Bay,

  Inland in Kent, is called so, he might say.

  ‘But little he says compared with what he does.

  If ever a sage troubles him he will buzz 80

  Like a beehive to conclude the tedious fray:

  And the sage, who knows all languages, runs away.

  Yet Lob has thirteen hundred names for a fool,

  And though he never could spare time for school

  To unteach what the fox so well expressed, 85

  On biting the cock’s head off, – Quietness is best, –

  He can talk quite as well as anyone

  After his thinking is forgot and done.

  He first of all told someone else’s wife,

  For a farthing she’d skin a flint and spoil a knife 90

  Worth sixpence skinning it. She heard him speak:

  “She had a face as long as a wet week”

  Said he, telling the tale in after years.

  With blue smock and with gold rings in his ears,

  Sometimes he is a pedlar, not too poor 95

  To keep his wit. This is tall Tom that bore

  The logs in, and with Shakespeare in the hall

  Once talked, when icicles hung by the wall.

  As Herne the Hunter he has known hard times.

  On sleepless nights he made up weather rhymes 100

  Which others spoilt. And, Hob being then his name,

  He kept the hog that thought the butcher came

  To bring his breakfast. “You thought wrong,” said Hob.

  When there were kings in Kent this very Lob,

  Whose sheep grew fat and he himself grew merry, 105

  Wedded the king’s daughter of Canterbury;

  For he alone, unlike squire, lord, and king,

  Watched a night by her without slumbering;

  He kept both waking. When he was but a lad

  He won a rich man’s heiress, deaf, dumb, and sad, 110

  By rousing her to laugh at him. He carried

  His donkey on his back. So they were married.

  And while he was a little cobbler’s boy

  He tricked the giant coming to destroy

  Shrewsbury by flood. “And how far is it yet?” 115

  The giant asked in passing. “I forget;

  But see these shoes I’ve worn out on the road

  And we’re not there yet.” He emptied out his load

  Of shoes for mending. The giant let fall from his spade

  The earth for damming Severn, and thus made 120

  The Wrekin hill; and little Ercall hill

  Rose where the giant scraped his boots. While still

  So young, our Jack was chief of Gotham’s sages.

  But long before he could have been wise, ages

  Earlier than this, while he grew thick and strong 125

  And ate his bacon, or, at times, sang a song

  And merely smelt it, as Jack the giant-killer

  He made a name. He too ground up the miller,

  The Yorkshireman who ground men’s bones for flour.

  ‘Do you believe Jack dead before his hour? 130

  Or that his name is Walker, or Bottlesford,

  Or Button, a mere clown, or squire, or lord?

  The man you saw, – Lob-lie-by-the-fire, Jack Cade,

  Jack Smith, Jack Moon, poor Jack of every trade,

  Young Jack, or old Jack, or Jack What-d’ye-call, 135

  Jack-in-the-hedge, or Robin-run-by-the-wall,

  Robin Hood, Ragged Robin, lazy Bob,

  One of the lords of No Man’s Land, good Lob, –

  Although he was seen dying at Waterloo,

  Hastings, Agincourt, and Sedgemoor too, – 140

  Lives yet. He never will admit he is dead

  Till millers cease to grind men’s bones for bread,

  Not till our weathercock crows once again

  And I remove my house out of the lane

  On to the road.’ With this he disappeared 145

  In hazel and thorn tangled with old-man’s-beard.

  But one glimpse of his back, as there he stood,

  Choosing his way, proved him of old Jack’s blood,

  Young Jack perhaps, and now a Wiltshireman

  As he has oft been since his days began. 150

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  DIGGING

  Today I think

  Only with scents, – scents dead leaves yield,

  And bracken, and wild carrot’s seed,

  And the square mustard field;

  Odours that rise 5

  When the spade wounds the root of tree,

  Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,

  Rhubarb or celery;

  The smoke’s smell, too,

  Flowing from where a bonfire burns 10

  The dead, the waste, the dangerous,

  And all to sweetness turns.

  It is enough

  To smell, to crumble the dark earth,

  While the robin sings over again 15

  Sad songs of Autumn mirth.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  LOVERS

  The two men in the road were taken aback.

  The lovers came out shading their eyes from the sun,

  And never was white so white, or black so black,

  As her cheeks and hair. ‘There are more things than one

  A man might turn into a wood for, Jack,’ 5

  Said George; Jack whispered: ‘He has not got a gun.

  It’s a bit too much of a good thing, I say.

  They are going the other road, look. And see her run.’ –

  She ran – ‘What a thing it is, this picking may.’

  List of poems in chronological order
r />   List of poems in alphabetical order

  IN MEMORIAM (EASTER, 1915)

  The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood

  This Eastertide call into mind the men,

  Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

  Have gathered them and will do never again.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  HEAD AND BOTTLE

  The downs will lose the sun, white alyssum

  Lose the bees’ hum;

  But head and bottle tilted back in the cart

  Will never part

  Till I am cold as midnight and all my hours 5

  Are beeless flowers.

  He neither sees, nor hears, nor smells, nor thinks,

  But only drinks,

  Quiet in the yard where tree trunks do not lie

  More quietly. 10

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  HOME

  Often I had gone this way before:

  But now it seemed I never could be

  And never had been anywhere else;

  ‘Twas home; one nationality

  We had, I and the birds that sang, 5

  One memory.

  They welcomed me. I had come back

  That eve somehow from somewhere far:

  The April mist, the chill, the calm,

  Meant the same thing familiar 10

  And pleasant to us, and strange too,

  Yet with no bar.

  The thrush on the oaktop in the lane

  Sang his last song, or last but one;

  And as he ended, on the elm 15

  Another had but just begun

  His last; they knew no more than I

  The day was done.

  Then past his dark white cottage front

  A labourer went along, his tread 20

  Slow, half with weariness, half with ease;

  And, through the silence, from his shed

  The sound of sawing rounded all

  That silence said.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  HEALTH

  Four miles at a leap, over the dark hollow land,

  To the frosted steep of the down and its junipers black,

  Travels my eye with equal ease and delight:

  And scarce could my body leap four yards.

  This is the best and the worst of it – 5

  Never to know,

  Yet to imagine gloriously, pure health.

  Today, had I suddenly health,

  I could not satisfy the desire of my heart

  Unless health abated it, 10

  So beautiful is the air in its softness and clearness, while Spring

  Promises all and fails in nothing as yet;

  And what blue and what white is I never knew

  Before I saw this sky blessing the land.

  For had I health I could not ride or run or fly 15

  So far or so rapidly over the land

  As I desire: I should reach Wiltshire tired;

  I should have changed my mind before I could be in Wales.

  I could not love; I could not command love.

  Beauty would still be far off 20

  However many hills I climbed over;

  Peace would still be farther.

  Maybe I should not count it anything

  To leap these four miles with the eye;

  And either I should not be filled almost to bursting with desire, 25

  Or with my power desire would still keep pace.

  Yet I am not satisfied

  Even with knowing I never could be satisfied.

  With health and all the power that lies

  In maiden beauty, poet and warrior, 30

  In Caesar, Shakespeare, Alcibiades,

  Mazeppa, Leonardo, Michelangelo,

  In any maiden whose smile is lovelier

  Than sunlight upon dew,

  I could not be as the wagtail running up and down 35

  The warm tiles of the roof slope, twittering

  Happily and sweetly as if the sun itself

  Extracted the song

  As the hand makes sparks from the fur of a cat:

  I could not be as the sun. 40

  Nor should I be content to be

  As little as the bird or as mighty as the sun.

  For the bird knows not of the sun,

  And the sun regards not the bird.

  But I am almost proud to love both bird and sun, 45

  Though scarce this Spring could my body leap four yards.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  THE HUXTER

  He has a hump like an ape on his back;

  He has of money a plentiful lack;

  And but for a gay coat of double his girth

  There is not a plainer thing on the earth

  This fine May morning. 5

  But the huxter has a bottle of beer;

  He drives a cart and his wife sits near

  Who does not heed his lack or his hump;

  And they laugh as down the lane they bump

  This fine May morning. 10

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  SHE DOTES

  She dotes on what the wild birds say

  Or hint or mock at, night and day, –

  Thrush, blackbird, all that sing in May,

  And songless plover,

  Hawk, heron, owl, and woodpecker. 5

  They never say a word to her

  About her lover.

  She laughs at them for childishness,

  She cries at them for carelessness

  Who see her going loverless 10

  Yet sing and chatter

  Just as when he was not a ghost,

  Nor ever ask her what she has lost

  Or what is the matter.

  Yet she has fancied blackbirds hide 15

  A secret, and that thrushes chide

  Because she thinks death can divide

  Her from her lover;

  And she has slept, trying to translate

  The word the cuckoo cries to his mate 20

  Over and over.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  SONG

  At poet’s tears,

  Sweeter than any smiles but hers,

  She laughs; I sigh;

  And yet I could not live if she should die.

  And when in June 5

  Once more the cuckoo spoils his tune,

  She laughs at sighs;

  And yet she says she loves me till she dies.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  A CAT

  She had a name among the children;

  But no one loved though someone owned

  Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime

  And had her kittens duly drowned.

  In Spring, nevertheless, this cat 5

  Ate blackbirds, thrushes, nightingales,

  And birds of bright voice and plume and flight,

  As well as scraps from neighbours’ pails.

  I loathed and hated her for this;

  One speckle on a thrush’s breast 10

  Was worth a million such; and yet

  She lived long, till God gave her rest.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  MELANCHOLY

  The rain and wind, the rain and wind, raved endlessly.

  On me the Summer storm, and fever, and melancholy

  Wrought magic, so that if I feared the solitude

  Far more I feared all company: too sharp, too rude,

  Had been the wisest or the dearest huma
n voice. 5

  What I desired I knew not, but whate’er my choice

  Vain it must be, I knew. Yet naught did my despair

  But sweeten the strange sweetness, while through the wild air

  All day long I heard a distant cuckoo calling

  And, soft as dulcimers, sounds of near water falling, 10

  And, softer, and remote as if in history,

  Rumours of what had touched my friends, my foes, or me.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  TONIGHT

  Harry, you know at night

  The larks in Castle Alley

  Sing from the attic’s height

  As if the electric light

  Were the true sun above a summer valley: 5

  Whistle, don’t knock, tonight.

  I shall come early, Kate:

  And we in Castle Alley

  Will sit close out of sight

  Alone, and ask no light 10

  Of lamp or sun above a summer valley:

  Tonight I can stay late.

  List of poems in chronological order

  List of poems in alphabetical order

  APRIL

  The sweetest thing, I thought

  At one time, between earth and heaven

  Was the first smile

  When mist has been forgiven

  And the sun has stolen out, 5

  Peered, and resolved to shine at seven

  On dabbled lengthening grasses,

  Thick primroses and early leaves uneven,

  When earth’s breath, warm and humid, far surpasses

  The richest oven’s, and loudly rings ‘cuckoo’ 10

  And sharply the nightingale’s ‘tsoo, troo, troo, troo’:

  To say ‘God bless it’ was all that I could do.

  But now I know one sweeter

  By far since the day Emily

  Turned weeping back 15