Publishing my Edward Thomas

The Forest Poems

Manuscript of The Dark Forest

Forest is one of the most  frequent symbols in the poetry, but he disliked obvious symbolism and the 'forest' meanings change with context.  'and our explanations tend to sound heavy and clumsy compared to the poet's touch' (Coombes)

The Green Roads, The Dark Forest, Lights Out.

Spencer Gore, The Icknield Way, 1912.                                                 creative commons.wiki

Edward Thomas was specific about the 'forest' in the Green Roads.

'a fragment left 6 miles from here. (Hare Hall Camp), the best of all this county. I go there every time I can.... You can't imagine a wilder, quieter place.'

 

It is a fairy-tale, emblematic landscape with  old man and child, goose feathers and the Hansel and Gretel -ist track.

The second line has an interesting internal rhyme structure which has a sense of wandering, but because of the dominance of forest, we seem to be getting drawn in under the forest canopy more and more.

An oak tree ages and dies, but there is memory and the present  and future repeating moment of thrush song.

 

The Green Roads

The green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,

Life marks left behind by someone 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
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see

The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.

 

 

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.

 

{Not even beloved and lover or child and mother,

One from within, one from

Without the forest could recognise each other,

Since they have changed their home.}

 

This last stanza he omitted - it was presumably too obvious. It does make it clear that the poem is elegiac and the separation of living from dead, the war dead, is absolute.

 

 

LIGHTS OUT

 

 

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.