The Project Gutenberg EBook of Last Poems, by Edward Thomas

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Title: Last Poems

Author: Edward Thomas

Release Date: September 23, 2007 [EBook #22732]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAST POEMS ***

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