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Edward Thomas, memory, in English Clear filters

SadEdward Thomas

Like the Touch of Rain

LIKE the touch of rain she was On a man's flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise: With the love of the storm he burns, He sings, he laughs, well I know how, But forgets when he returns As I shall not forget her "Go now." Those two words shut a door Between me and the blessed rain That was never shut before And will not open again.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

As the Team's Head-Brass

As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn The lovers disappeared into the wood. I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm That strewed an angle of the fallow, and Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square Of charlock. Every time the horses turned Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned Upon the handles to say or ask a word, About the weather, next about the war. Scraping the share he faced towards the wood, And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed Once more. The blizzard felled the elm whose crestI sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole, The ploughman said. "When will they take it away?" "When the war's over." So the talk began-- One minute and an interval of ten,
SadEdward Thomas

The Cuckoo

THAT'S the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it. When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know Too well the year when first I failed to hear it-- It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep "Ho! Ho!" Ten times with an angry voice he shouted "Ho! Ho!" but not in anger, for that was his way. He died that Summer, and that is how I remember The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me saying, "Nay." And now, as you said, "There it is," I was hearing Not the cuckoo at all, but my man's "Ho! Ho!" instead. And I think that even if I could lose my deafness The cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voice
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

The Green Roads

THE green roads that end in the forest Are strewn with white goose feathers this June, Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest To show his track. But he has never come back. Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest. Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers. An old man along the green road to the forest Strays from one, from another a child alone. In the thicket bordering the forest, All day long a thrush twiddles his song. It is old, but the trees are young in the forest, All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep. That oak saw the ages pass in the forest: They were a host, but their memories are lost, For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

The Clouds That Are so Light

THE clouds that are so light, Beautiful, swift and bright, Cast shadows on field and park Of the earth that is so dark, And even so now, light one! Beautiful, swift and bright one! You let fall on a heart that was dark, Unillumined, a deeper mark. But clouds would have, without earth To shadow, far less worth: Away from your shadow on me Your beauty less would be, And if it still be treasured An age hence, it shall be measured By this small dark spot Without which it were not.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

Women He Liked

WOMEN he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses. He himself was like a cob, And leather-coloured. Also he loved a tree. For the life in them he loved most living things, But a tree chiefly. All along the lane He planted elms where now the stormcock sings That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train. Till then the track had never had a name For all its thicket and the nightingales That should have earned it. No one was to blame. To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails. Many years since, Bob Hayward died, and now None passes there because the mist and the rain Out of the elms have turned the lane to slough And gloom, the name alone survives, Bob's Lane.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

House and Man

ONE hour: as dim he and his house now look As a reflection in a rippling brook, While I remember him; but first, his house. Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles Part of the squirrels' track. In all those miles Of forest silence and forest murmur, only One house--"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it were lonely"-- Which the trees looked upon from every side, And that was his. He waved good-bye to hideA sigh that he converted to a laugh. He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

These Things That Poets Said

THESE things that poets said Of love seemed true to me When I loved and I fed On love and poetry equally. But now I wish I knew If theirs were love indeed, Or if mine were the true And theirs some other lovely weed: For certainly not thus, Then or thereafter, I Loved ever. Between us Decide, good Love, before I die. Only, that once I loved By this one argument Is very plainly proved: I, loving not, am different.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

Under the Woods

WHEN these old woods were young The thrushes' ancestors As sweetly sung In the old years. There was no garden here, Apples nor mistletoe; No children dear Ran to and fro. New then was this thatched cot, But the keeper was old, And he had not Much lead or gold. Most silent beech and yew: As he went round about The woods to view Seldom he shot.
ContemplativeEdward Thomas

Parting

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,

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