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    Last Poems
    Last Poems
    Last Poems
    Ebook99 pages45 minutes

    Last Poems

    By Edward Thomas

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    About this ebook

    This vintage book contains a wonderful collection of poems by Edward Thomas. A great addition to any bookshelf, this text is a veritable must-have for fans of Thomas's work, and is not to be missed by the discerning collector of such literature. The poems contained herein include: I Never Saw that Land Before, The Dark Forest, Celandine, The Ash Grove, Old Man, The Thrush, A 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?... and more. Philip Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh essayist and poet. He is widely considered a war poet, although only a few of his poems are directly concerned with his war experiences. This book is being republished in an affordable, modern edition complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateMay 31, 2013
    ISBN9781473389915
    Last Poems
    Author

    Edward Thomas

    Edward Thomas was born near Uxbridge in 1943 and grew up mainly in Hackney, east London in the 1950s. His teaching career took him to cental Africa and the Middle East. Early retirement from the profession enabled him to concentrate on writing. Along with authorship of half a dozen books, he has contributed regular columns to several journals.

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      Book preview

      Last Poems - Edward Thomas

      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

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