Edward Thomas’s speaker is alone in a raging summer storm, feverish and sunk in melancholy. The wind and rain “raved endlessly,” and this wild weather, mixed with his illness, works a kind of magic on him. He is afraid of solitude, but even more terrified of company because any human voice—even the kindest—feels too sharp and intrusive. He cannot name what he desires, yet he knows no choice would satisfy. Strangely, this despair doesn’t crush him; it sweetens an already strange, heightened mood.
All day he listens: a distant cuckoo calling, water falling softly like dulcimers, and, fainter still, rumors of things that once touched his friends, his enemies, or himself—sounds as remote as history. The poem captures a state where ordinary sadness turns almost pleasurable, sharpened by fever and rain, and the world outside becomes a delicate, ghostly music that soothes more than any person could.