Chapter 1

Produced by Lewis Jones

Edward Thomas (1918) _Last Poems_

LAST POEMS

By

EDWARD THOMAS

LONDON: SELWYN & BLOUNT, 12, YORK BUILDINGS, ADELPHI, W.C. 2. 1918.

CONTENTS

I never saw that Land before The Dark Forest Celandine The Ash Grove Old Man The Thrush I built myself a House of Glass February Afternoon Digging Two Houses The Mill-water A Dream Sedge-Warblers Under the Woods What will they do? To-night A Cat The Unknown Song She dotes For These March the Third The New House March The Cuckoo Over the Hills Home The Hollow Wood Wind and Mist The Unknown Bird The Lofty Sky After Rain Digging But these things also April The Barn The Barn and the Down The Child on the Cliffs Good-night The Wasp Trap July A Tale Parting Lovers That Girl's Clear Eyes The Child in the Orchard The Source The Mountain Chapel First known when lost The Word These things that Poets said Home Aspens An Old Song There was a Time Ambition No one cares less than I Roads This is no case of petty Right or Wrong The Chalk-Pit Health Beauty Snow The New Year The Brook The Other House and Man The Gypsy Man and Dog A Private Out in the Dark

I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE

I NEVER saw that land before, And now can never see it again; Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar Endeared, by gladness and by pain, Great was the affection that I bore

To the valley and the river small, The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees, The chickens from the farmsteads, all Elm-hidden, and the tributaries Descending at equal interval;

The blackthorns down along the brook With wounds yellow as crocuses Where yesterday the labourer's hook Had sliced them cleanly; and the breeze That hinted all and nothing spoke.

I neither expected anything Nor yet remembered: but some goal I touched then; and if I could sing What would not even whisper my soul As I went on my journeying,

I should use, as the trees and birds did, A language not to be betrayed; And what was hid should still be hid Excepting from those like me made Who answer when such whispers bid.

THE DARK FOREST

DARK is the forest and deep, and overhead Hang stars like seeds of light In vain, though not since they were sown was bred Anything more bright.

And evermore mighty multitudes ride About, nor enter in; Of the other multitudes that dwell inside Never yet was one seen.

The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite Outside is gold and white, Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet The others, day or night.

CELANDINE

THINKING of her had saddened me at first, Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, A living thing, not what before I nursed, The shadow I was growing to love almost, The phantom, not the creature with bright eye That I had thought never to see, once lost.

She found the celandines of February Always before us all. Her nature and name Were like those flowers, and now immediately For a short swift eternity back she came, Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore Her brightest bloom among the winter hues Of all the world; and I was happy too, Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who Had seen them with me Februarys before, Bending to them as in and out she trod And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod.

But this was a dream: the flowers were not true, Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there One of five petals and I smelt the juice Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more, Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.

THE ASH GROVE

HALF of the grove stood dead, and those that yet lived made Little more than the dead ones made of shade. If they led to a house, long before they had seen its fall: But they welcomed me; I was glad without cause and delayed.

Scarce a hundred paces under the trees was the Interval-- Paces each sweeter than sweetest miles--but nothing at all, Not even the spirits of memory and fear with restless wing, Could climb down in to molest me over the wall

That I passed through at either end without noticing. And now an ash grove far from those hills can bring The same tranquillity in which I wander a ghost With a ghostly gladness, as if I heard a girl sing

The song of the Ash Grove soft as love uncrossed, And then in a crowd or in distance it were lost, But the moment unveiled something unwilling to die And I had what most I desired, without search or desert or cost.

OLD MAN

OLD Man, or Lad's-love,--in the name there's nothing To one that knows not Lad's-love, or Old Man, The hoar-green feathery herb, almost a tree, Growing with rosemary and lavender. Even to one that knows it well, the names Half decorate, half perplex, the thing it is: At least, what that is clings not to the names In spite of time. And yet I like the names.

The herb itself I like not, but for certain I love it, as some day the child will love it Who plucks a feather from the door-side bush Whenever she goes in or out of the house. Often she waits there, snipping the tips and shrivelling The shreds at last on to the path, perhaps Thinking, perhaps of nothing, till she sniffs Her fingers and runs off. The bush is still But half as tall as she, though it is as old; So well she clips it. Not a word she says; And I can only wonder how much hereafter She will remember, with that bitter scent, Of garden rows, and ancient damson-trees Topping a hedge, a bent path to a door, A low thick bush beside the door, and me Forbidding her to pick.

As for myself, Where first I met the bitter scent is lost. I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds, Sniff them and think and sniff again and try Once more to think what it is I am remembering, Always in vain. I cannot like the scent, Yet I would rather give up others more sweet, With no meaning, than this bitter one.

I have mislaid the key. I sniff the spray And think of nothing; I see and I hear nothing; Yet seem, too, to be listening, lying in wait For what I should, yet never can, remember: No garden appears, no path, no hoar-green bush Of Lad's-love, or Old Man, no child beside, Neither father nor mother, nor any playmate; Only an avenue, dark, nameless, without end.

THE THRUSH

WHEN Winter's ahead, What can you read in November That you read in April When Winter's dead?

I hear the thrush, and I see Him alone at the end of the lane Near the bare poplar's tip, Singing continuously.

Is it more that you know Than that, even as in April, So in November, Winter is gone that must go?

Or is all your lore Not to call November November, And April April, And Winter Winter--no more?

But I know the months all, And their sweet names, April, May and June and October, As you call and call

I must remember What died into April And consider what will be born Of a fair November;

And April I love for what It was born of, and November For what it will die in, What they are and what they are not,

While you love what is kind, What you can sing in And love and forget in All that's ahead and behind.

I BUILT MYSELF A HOUSE OF GLASS.

I BUILT myself a house of glass: It took me years to make it: And I was proud. But now, alas, Would God someone would break it. But it looks too magnificent. No neighbour casts a stone From where he dwells, in tenement Or palace of glass, alone.

FEBRUARY AFTERNOON

MEN heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw, A thousand years ago even as now, Black rooks with white gulls following the plough So that the first are last until a caw Commands that last are first again,--a law Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how A thousand years might dust lie on his brow Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.

Time swims before me, making as a day A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke Of war as ever, audacious or resigned, And God still sits aloft in the array That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.

DIGGING

WHAT matter makes my spade for tears or mirth, Letting down two clay pipes into the earth? The one I smoked, the other a soldier Of Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet Perhaps. The dead man's immortality Lies represented lightly with my own, A yard or two nearer the living air Than bones of ancients who, amazed to see Almighty God erect the mastodon, Once laughed, or wept, in this same light of day.

TWO HOUSES

BETWEEN a sunny bank and the sun The farmhouse smiles On the riverside plat: No other one So pleasant to look at And remember, for many miles, So velvet-hushed and cool under the warm tiles.

Not far from the road it lies, yet caught Far out of reach Of the road's dust And the dusty thought Of passers-by, though each Stops, and turns, and must Look down at it like a wasp at the muslined peach.

But another house stood there long before: And as if above graves Still the turf heaves Above its stones: Dark hangs the sycamore, Shadowing kennel and bones And the black dog that shakes his chain and moans.

And when he barks, over the river Flashing fast, Dark echoes reply, And the hollow past Half yields the dead that never More than half hidden lie: And out they creep and back again for ever.

THE MILL-WATER

ONLY the sound remains Of the old mill; Gone is the wheel; On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.

Water that toils no more Dangles white locks And, falling, mocks The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar.

Pretty to see, by day Its sound is naught Compared with thought And talk and noise of labour and of play.

Night makes the difference. In calm moonlight, Gloom infinite, The sound comes surging in upon the sense:

Solitude, company,-- When it is night,-- Grief or delight By it must haunted or concluded be.

Often the silentness Has but this one Companion; Wherever one creeps in the other is:

Sometimes a thought is drowned By it, sometimes Out of it climbs; All thoughts begin or end upon this sound,

Only the idle foam Of water falling Changelessly calling, Where once men had a work-place and a home.

A DREAM

OVER known fields with an old friend in dream I walked, but came sudden to a strange stream. Its dark waters were bursting out most bright From a great mountain's heart into the light. They ran a short course under the sun, then back Into a pit they plunged, once more as black As at their birth; and I stood thinking there How white, had the day shone on them, they were, Heaving and coiling. So by the roar and hiss And by the mighty motion of the abyss I was bemused, that I forgot my friend And neither saw nor sought him till the end, When I awoke from waters unto men Saying: "I shall be here some day again."

SEDGE-WARBLERS

THIS beauty made me dream there was a time Long past and irrecoverable, a clime Where any brook so radiant racing clear Through buttercup and kingcup bright as brass But gentle, nourishing the meadow grass That leans and scurries in the wind, would bear Another beauty, divine and feminine, Child to the sun, a nymph whose soul unstained Could love all day, and never hate or tire, A lover of mortal or immortal kin.

And yet, rid of this dream, ere I had drained Its poison, quieted was my desire So that I only looked into the water, Clearer than any goddess or man's daughter, And hearkened while it combed the dark green hair And shook the millions of the blossoms white Of water-crowfoot, and curdled to one sheet The flowers fallen from the chestnuts in the park Far off. And sedge-warblers, clinging so light To willow twigs, sang longer than the lark, Quick, shrill, or grating, a song to match the heat Of the strong sun, nor less the water's cool, Gushing through narrows, swirling in the pool. Their song that lacks all words, all melody, All sweetness almost, was dearer then to me Than sweetest voice that sings in tune sweet words. This was the best of May--the small brown birds Wisely reiterating endlessly What no man learnt yet, in or out of school.

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.

But now that he is gone Out of most memories, Still lingers on, A stoat of his,

But one, shrivelled and green, And with no scent at all, And barely seen On this shed wall.

WHAT WILL THEY DO?

What will they do when I am gone? It is plain That they will do without me as the rain Can do without the flowers and the grass That profit by it and must perish without. I have but seen them in the loud street pass; And I was naught to them. I turned about To see them disappearing carelessly. But what if I in them as they in me Nourished what has great value and no price? Almost I thought that rain thirsts for a draught Which only in the blossom's chalice lies, Until that one turned back and lightly laughed.

TO-NIGHT

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: Whistle, don't knock, to-night.

I shall come early, Kate: And we in Castle Alley Will sit close out of sight Alone, and ask no light Of lamp or sun above a summer valley: To-night I can stay late.

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 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 Was worth a million such; and yet She lived long, till God gave her rest.

THE UNKNOWN

SHE is most fair, And when they see her pass The poets' ladies Look no more in the glass But after her.

On a bleak moor Running under the moon She lures a poet, Once proud or happy, soon Far from his door.

Beside a train, Because they saw her go, Or failed to see her, Travellers and watchers know Another pain.

The simple lack Of her is more to me Than others' presence, Whether life splendid be Or utter black.

I have not seen, I have no news of her; I can tell only She is not here, but there She might have been.

She is to be kissed Only perhaps by me; She may be seeking Me and no other; she May not exist.

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 Once more the cuckoo spoils his tune, She laughs at sighs; And yet she says she loves me till she dies.

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. 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 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 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 Over and over.

FOR THESE

AN acre of land between the shore and the hills, Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three, The lovely visible earth and sky and sea, Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:

A house that shall love me as I love it, Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash-trees That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches Shall often visit and make love in and flit:

A garden I need never go beyond, Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun: A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:

For these I ask not, but, neither too late Nor yet too early, for what men call content, And also that something may be sent To be contented with, I ask of fate.

MARCH THE THIRD*

HERE again (she said) is March the third And twelve hours singing for the bird 'Twixt dawn and dusk, from half past six To half past six, never unheard.

'Tis Sunday, and the church-bells end When the birds do. I think they blend Now better than they will when passed Is this unnamed, unmarked godsend.

Or do all mark, and none dares say, How it may shift and long delay, Somewhere before the first of Spring, But never fails, this singing day?

And when it falls on Sunday, bells Are a wild natural voice that dwells On hillsides; but the birds' songs have The holiness gone from the bells.

This day unpromised is more dear Than all the named days of the year When seasonable sweets come in, Because we know how lucky we are.

* The author's birthday.

THE NEW HOUSE

Now first, as I shut the door, I was alone In the new house; and the wind Began to moan.

Old at once was the house, And I was old; My ears were teased with the dread Of what was foretold,

Nights of storm, days of mist, without end; Sad days when the sun Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs Not yet begun.

All was foretold me; naught Could I foresee; But I learned how the wind would sound After these things should be.

MARCH

Now I know that Spring will come again, Perhaps to-morrow: however late I've patience After this night following on such a day.

While still my temples ached from the cold burning Of hail and wind, and still the primroses Torn by the hail were covered up in it, The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped, As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy. But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the west: Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost, And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew that Spring Would come again, I knew it had not come, That it was lost too in those mountains chill.

What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet, hail, Had kept them quiet as the primroses. They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they sang, On gates, on ground; they sang while they changed perches And while they fought, if they remembered to fight: So earnest were they to pack into that hour Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon Grew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twas no time For singing merely. So they could keep off silence And night, they cared not what they sang or screamed; Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft; And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong. Something they knew--I also, while they sang And after. Not till night had half its stars And never a cloud, was I aware of silence Stained with all that hour's songs, a silence Saying that Spring returns, perhaps to-morrow.

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 of my dead.

OVER THE HILLS

OFTEN and often it came back again To mind, the day I passed the horizon ridge To a new country, the path I had to find By half-gaps that were stiles once in the hedge, The pack of scarlet clouds running across The harvest evening that seemed endless then And after, and the inn where all were kind, All were strangers. I did not know my loss Till one day twelve months later suddenly I leaned upon my spade and saw it all, Though far beyond the sky-line. It became Almost a habit through the year for me To lean and see it and think to do the same Again for two days and a night. Recall Was vain: no more could the restless brook Ever turn back and climb the waterfall To the lake that rests and stirs not in its nook, As in the hollow of the collar-bone Under the mountain's head of rush and stone.

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, 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 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 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 Slow, half with weariness, half with ease; And, through the silence, from his shed The sound of sawing rounded all That silence said.

THE HOLLOW WOOD

OUT in the sun the goldfinch flits Along the thistle-tops, flits and twits Above the hollow wood Where birds swim like fish-- Fish that laugh and shriek-- To and fro, far below In the pale hollow wood.

Lichen, ivy, and moss Keep evergreen the trees That stand half-flayed and dying, And the dead trees on their knees In dog's-mercury and moss: And the bright twit of the goldfinch drops Down there as he flits on thistle-tops.

WIND AND MIST