Edward Thomas’s speaker is in the middle of a painful goodbye, and the sting of this parting is sharpened by a bitter twist of memory. He imagines the past as a strange, soundless land where everything is numbed—no wind, no rain can hurt, and all people move as equal shades. In that realm, pleasure and pain lose their bite, and the self becomes a ghost without blood or feeling. So far, this sounds almost comforting. But then he explains why that very numbness makes today’s farewell doubly painful. It isn’t just that he’s leaving; it’s that the old unhappiness this parting supposedly ends now resurfaces in memory, not as a wound that could have healed, but as something faded—almost blissful. That past sorrow, now softened and spiritualized, mocks him from its untouchable yesterday. The mood is wistful and quietly devastated, as the speaker confronts how memory can turn pain into a strange, unreachable paradise that only deepens present loss.
Parting — Summary
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. 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 Bring joy to the joyous equally; Both sadden the sad. So memory made
Parting to-day a double pain: First because it was parting; next Because the ill it ended vexed 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
Being faded: rather a kind of bliss, For there spiritualized it lay In the perpetual yesterday That naught can stir or stain like this.