On May Hill

An Edward Thomas Fellowship walk on May Hill, Gloucestershire.

Marc Thompson

Saturday 20th at May Hill
The Edward Thomas Fellowship  Walk.

Valerie McLean






 

It was an uncharacteristically misty day, so none of the far views Edward Thomas saw and included in his wonderful poem, Words. But it was very atmospheric and had the spirit of place rather closer to Marc's painting than to Valerie's.
Matthew Oates of the National Trust was there and made the walk extra richly interesting. His twitters will be worth following.









Here is an extract from the novel: it takes place just as Edward is reaching a decision about the enlisting or America dilemma.

'It was a chance to pay another visit to May Hill, where he’d been more than once with both Robert and Jack together.

They pedalled up through slopes of bracken and foxgloves, talking about Robert as they went, remembering how he would sometimes find their walks over-long, good-humouredly complaining. Tears came, to Edward’s surprise, and he blinked them away.

Some old firs and a beech tree were all that was left of a wood that had once clothed the slopes, Jack told him. As the gradient flattened, the hill became a broad common topped by a square plantation of young Scots firs. It was a clear bright day, one of the days when you could, it was said, identify twelve counties from the west side of the hill. There was the Severn snaking across its plain. Turn a little and you were looking towards the Cotswold Hills. He recognised the deep green of the Forest of Dean and the dip in its contours that was the Wye. Far beyond were the dark hills of Monmouthshire and further still the cloudy mass of the Black Mountains.

Jack spent his time closely observing the plants through his round glasses, often taking out his magnifying glass to see better. Once Edward heard him mutter,

‘Ah-ha -Veronica Officinalis – the heath speedwell – good.’

He looked towards Wales. That inheritance would always be part of him, but without doubt he was mostly an Englishman. To claim that he was Welsh was something of a sham, and he loathed sham and deception above anything. Still he valued Wales, that beautiful country, its language and its people, but he must admit to being a visitor, an admiring visitor whose roots gave him a small claim.

 Sitting down with his back to a sweet chestnut tree, looking towards the English counties, he began to write a draft of a poem in his notebook. It was about English words. And about names, villages and hills. He would include Wales. And himself and what, most passionately, he wanted. He thought of all his prose writing, the millions of words he’d written. Poetry was different; sometimes it was as if the words chose him, not the other way. He wanted to celebrate the history and the ever-changing, ever-renewing quality of words. They were old and yet worn new, again and again, they were like streams, always young, especially after rain. Words, and names, and things – real, exact concrete things – these he could celebrate.

He wrote feverishly, composing a kind of prayer – a prayer to words:

‘Let me sometimes dance

With you,

Or climb

Or stand perchance

In ecstasy,

Fixed and free

In a rhyme,

As poets do.’

 

And here is the poem in its entirety:
Words
Out of us all
That make rhymes,
Will you choose
Sometimes –
As the winds use
A crack in the wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through –
Choose me,
You English words?
I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet,
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew, -
As our hills are, old, -
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.
Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings, –
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire,
And the villages there, –
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb,
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do.

There is an excellent article about Words, in Carol Rumens' Poem of the Week column, the Guardian.