Complete Poetical Works of Edward Thomas Page 6
‘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
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