Publishing my Edward Thomas

The rain that begins again.

Today we were to go for lunch to friends in south Oxford - normally  a quick stride along the Thames towpath. But it was not possible unless you had waders and even then it would have been dangerous. Never such weather before in my memory. We had to drive and risk  the flooded roads without getting stuck. Nothing compared with much of the West country.

My friend had bought a copy of the novel at the Book Fair  and claimed  to have enjoyed it.  She knew a great deal about Thomas having been taught by an early author on him, William Cooke.

Just this weather today and a December 1914 poem.
Edward had to defend 'inlaid' and 'played' to Eleanor Farjeon, saying that he had seen  leaves these two ways 'up at the top of hills.'  Rain is therapeutic, mostly, in Thomas's poetry and I think it is here.

After Rain

The rain of a night and a day and a night
Stops at the light
Of this pale choked day. The peering sun
Sees what has been done.
The road under the trees has a border new
of purple hue
Inside the border of bright thin grass:
For all that has
Been left by November of leaves is torn
From hazel and thorn
And the greater trees. Throughout the copse
No dead leaf drops
On grey grass, green moss, burnt-orange fern,
At the wind's return:
The leaflets out of the ash-tree shed
Are thinly spread
In the road, like little black fish, inlaid,
As if they played.
What hangs from the myriad branches down there
So hard and bare
Is twelve yellow apples lovely to see
On one crab-tree.
And on each twig of every tree in the dell
Uncountable
Crystals both dark and bright of the rain
That begins again.