17th, 18th & 20th January1915- three significant poems.

The Unknown Bird, The Mill-Pond and Man and Dog.
All three have notebook entries as possible origins, and The Unknown Bird has a passage in The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans, a sad passage where the bird is forlorn and seems to bring sorrow with it. Yet not so in this poem, more a transcendence,
                    'if sad
Twas only with joy too, too far off
For me to taste it. '

The note-takers /naturalists miss this transcendence - 'natural history [is in} danger of falling into the hands of mere takers of notes.'  He too was ambivalent about his own incessant note-book filling and in this poem - compared with Man and Dog- he has begun to find more of himself.

The Unknown Bird     

Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard

If others sang; but others never sang

In the great beech-wood all that May and June.

No one saw him: I alone could hear him

Though many listened. Was it but four years

Ago? or five? He never came again.

 

Oftenest when I heard him I was alone,

Nor could I ever make another hear.

La-la-la! he called, seeming far-off—

As if a cock crowed past the edge of the world,

As if the bird or I were in a dream.

Yet that he travelled through the trees and sometimes

Neared me, was plain, though somehow distant still

He sounded. All the proof is—I told men

What I had heard.

 

                                   I never knew a voice,

Man, beast, or bird, better than this. I told

The naturalists; but neither had they heard

Anything like the notes that did so haunt me,

I had them clear by heart and have them still.

Four years, or five, have made no difference. Then

As now that La-la-la! was bodiless sweet:

Sad more than joyful it was, if I must say

That it was one or other, but if sad

'Twas sad only with joy too, too far off

For me to taste it. But I cannot tell

If truly never anything but fair

The days were when he sang, as now they seem.

This surely I know, that I who listened then,

Happy sometimes, sometimes suffering

A heavy body and a heavy heart,

Now straightway, if I think of it, become

Light as that bird wandering beyond my shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mill-Pond

 

 

The sun blazed while the thunder yet
Added a boom:
A wagtail flickered bright over
The mill-pond’s gloom:

Less than the cooing in the alder
Isles of the pool
Sounded the thunder through that plunge
Of waters cool.

Scared starlings on the aspen tip
Past the black mill.
Outchattered the stream and the next roar
Far on the hill.

As my feet dangling teased the foam
That slid below
A girl came out. ‘Take care!’ she said—-
Ages ago.

She startled me, standing quite close
Dressed all in white:
Ages ago I was angry till
She passed from sight.

Then the storm burst, and as I crouched
To shelter, how
Beautiful and kind, too, she seemed,
As she does now!

Edna Longley's thoughts on this are so interesting but hard to summarise: querying why the poem seems to fade and maybe sentimentalise rather than build to power, she describes it as neither a war or a love poem and speculates on why that be. She contrasts it with the waters in A Dream.

Man and Dog
A very easy-to-love poem, straight from his prose and giving a social history through an individual. It reminds me of Frost's hired worker in Death of The Hired Man but still more of a character in Wordsworth.
''Twill take some getting.' 'Sir, I think 'twill so.'
The old man stared up at the mistletoe
That hung too high in the poplar's crest for plunder
Of any climber, though not for kissing under:
Then he went on against the north-east wind--- Straight but lame, leaning on a staff new-skinned, Carrying a brolly, flag-basket, and old coat,---
Towards Alto, ten miles off. And he had not
Done less from Chilgrove where he pulled up docks. 'Twere best, if he had had 'a money-box',
To have waited there till the sheep cleared a field
For what a half-week's flint-picking would yield.
His mind was running on the work he had done
Since he left Christchurch in the New Forest, one
Spring in the 'seventies,---navvying on dock and line From Southampton to Newcastle-on-Tyne,---
In 'seventy-four a year of soldiering
With the Berkshires,---hoeing and harvesting
In half the shires where corn and couch will grow.
His sons, three sons, were fighting, but the hoe
And reap-hook he liked, or anything to do with trees.
He fell once from a poplar tall as these:
The Flying Man they called him in hospital.
'If I flew now, to another world I'd fall.'
He laughed and whistled to the small brown bitch
With spots of blue that hunted in the ditch.
Her foxy Welsh grandfather must have paired
Beneath him. He kept sheep in Wales and scared Strangers, I will warrant, with his pearl eye
And trick of shrinking off as he were shy,
Then following close in silence for---for what?
'No rabbit, never fear, she ever got,
Yet always hunts. To-day she nearly had one:
She would and she wouldn't. 'Twas like that.
The bad one!
She's not much use, but still she's company,
Though I'm not. She goes everywhere with me. So
Alton I must reach to-night somehow:
I'll get no shakedown with that bedfellow
From farmers. Many a man sleeps worse to-night
Than I shall.' 'In the trenches.' 'Yes, that's right.
But they'll be out of that---I hope they be---
This weather, marching after the enemy.'
'And so I hope. Good luck.' And there I nodded
'Good-night. You keep straight on,' Stiffly he plodded; And at his heels the crisp leaves scurried fast,
And the leaf-coloured robin watched. They passed,
The robin till next day, the man for good,
Together in the twilight of the wood.                             

January 1915 'sprained ankle poems -
Edward Thomas wrote prolifically when confined to the house because of a serious ankle injury.
15th January - The Cuckoo,  and Swedes

The Cuckoo is the only Thomas poem with a woman narrator. It surely stemmed from a real conversation with a shepherd's widow. A passage in The Heart of England refers to the same shepherd's call. The last word is strengthened for me by the 'my' that precedes it.
The Cuckoo

That's the cuckoo, you say. I cannot hear it.
When last I heard it I cannot recall; but I know
Too well the year when first I failed to hear it -
It was drowned by my man groaning out to his sheep 'Ho! Ho!'

Ten times with an angry voice he shouted
'Ho! Ho!' but not in anger, for that was his way.
He died that Summer, and that is how I remember
The cuckoo calling, the children listening, and me saying 'Nay'.

And now, as you said, 'There it is', I was hearing
Not the cuckoo at all, but my man's 'Ho! Ho!' instead.
And I think that even if I could lose my deafness
The cuckoo's note would be drowned by the voice of my dead.

Swedes       

 They have taken the gable from the roof of clay
On the long swede pile.  They have let in the sun
To the white and gold and purple of curled fronds
Unsunned.  It is a sight more tender-gorgeous
At the wood-corner where Winter moans and drips
Than when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,
A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tomb
And, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,
God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,
Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.

But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.
This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.

This is a popular poem that takes the every-day and sees in it something  remarkable. I have always noticed colour in Thomas's poems and prose, the many greens especially, but this is certainly more 'tender-gorgeous.' Of course Harold Carter had yet to open the tomb of Tutankhamen  that created such a sensation in the twenties.

         

Edward Thomas's 'sprained ankle' poems - Over the Hills and The Lofty Sky.The titles say it all, don't they. I feel I haven't taken seriously enough just what an ordeal it must have been for Thomas being confined to the house. I myself need to get out of doors a great deal, but for him it was sometimes life-saving.
These two poems are again about remembering. The first concerns remembering remembering, but he encounters some problem, some flaw in the memory or in himself, implying that it is impossible to go back - in reality or just in full memory I don't know. Longley recommends we look carefullt at the line-breaks.                             

The Lofty Sky has a vibrant rhythm and energy - pent-up energy. Edna Longley sees it as having a strong Romantic theme.

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:-
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where nought deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives
What's above him no thought.
I might be a tench for aught
That I can do to-day
Down on the wealden clay.
Even the tench has days
When he floats up and plays
Among the lily leaves
And sees the sky, or grieves
Not if he nothing sees:
While I, I know that trees
Under that lofty sky
Are weeds, fields mud, and I
Would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.Edward Thomas's 'sprained ankle' poems - Over the Hills and The Lofty Sky.
The titles say it all, don't they. I feel I haven't taken seriously enough just what an ordeal it must have been for Thomas being confined to the house. I myself need to get out of doors a great deal, but for him it was sometimes life-saving.
These two poems are again about remembering. The first concerns remembering remembering, but he encounters some problem, some flaw in the memory or in himself, implying that it is impossible to go back - in reality or just in full memory I don't know. Longley recommends we look carefullt at the line-breaks.                             

The Lofty Sky has a vibrant rhythm and energy - pent-up energy. Edna Longley sees it as having a strong Romantic theme.

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:-
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where nought deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives
What's above him no thought.
I might be a tench for aught
That I can do to-day
Down on the wealden clay.
Even the tench has days
When he floats up and plays
Among the lily leaves
And sees the sky, or grieves
Not if he nothing sees:
While I, I know that trees
Under that lofty sky
Are weeds, fields mud, and I
Would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.Edward Thomas's 'sprained ankle' poems - Over the Hills and The Lofty Sky.
The titles say it all, don't they. I feel I haven't taken seriously enough just what an ordeal it must have been for Thomas being confined to the house. I myself need to get out of doors a great deal, but for him it was sometimes life-saving.
These two poems are again about remembering. The first concerns remembering remembering, but he encounters some problem, some flaw in the memory or in himself, implying that it is impossible to go back - in reality or just in full memory I don't know. Longley recommends we look carefullt at the line-breaks.                             

The Lofty Sky has a vibrant rhythm and energy - pent-up energy. Edna Longley sees it as having a strong Romantic theme.

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:-
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where nought deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives
What's above him no thought.
I might be a tench for aught
That I can do to-day
Down on the wealden clay.
Even the tench has days
When he floats up and plays
Among the lily leaves
And sees the sky, or grieves
Not if he nothing sees:
While I, I know that trees
Under that lofty sky
Are weeds, fields mud, and I
Would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.Edward Thomas's 'sprained ankle' poems - Over the Hills and The Lofty Sky.
The titles say it all, don't they. I feel I haven't taken seriously enough just what an ordeal it must have been for Thomas being confined to the house. I myself need to get out of doors a great deal, but for him it was sometimes life-saving.
These two poems are again about remembering. The first concerns remembering remembering, but he encounters some problem, some flaw in the memory or in himself, implying that it is impossible to go back - in reality or just in full memory I don't know. Longley recommends we look carefullt at the line-breaks.                             

The Lofty Sky has a vibrant rhythm and energy - pent-up energy. Edna Longley sees it as having a strong Romantic theme.

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:-
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where nought deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives
What's above him no thought.
I might be a tench for aught
That I can do to-day
Down on the wealden clay.
Even the tench has days
When he floats up and plays
Among the lily leaves
And sees the sky, or grieves
Not if he nothing sees:
While I, I know that trees
Under that lofty sky
Are weeds, fields mud, and I
Would arise and go far

To where the lilies are.

'Adlestrop' and 'Tears' - more 'sprained ankle' poems.

Both written or at least begun on the 8th January!

We may think there is nothing new to say about Adlestrop, but Edna Longley's marvellous notes to her edition sees the intense juxtaposition of composition showing a development. Tears has history and ambiguity, reflecting the violence of hounds and soldiers as well as their beauty, and perhaps stirrings of conscience about the enlisting issue.

Adlestrop  - and perhaps that's why it's so easy to love - is an appreciation of England 'aesthetically' only, something about which, after the epiphany of the autumn before, Thomas was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

But how wonderful that he could use his memories and his field notebooks to create these works while sitting in a deck-chair in the living room with his leg propped up, taking up most of the room and no doubt grumbling at everything Helen was doing.

 

Tears

It seems I have no tears left.
They should have fallen---
Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall---that day
When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out
But still all equals in their rage of gladness
Upon the scent, made one, like a great dragon
In Blooming Meadow that bends towards the sun
And once bore hops: and on that other day
When I stepped out from the double-shadowed
Tower Into an April morning, stirring and sweet
And warm. Strange solitude was there and silence.
A mightier charm than any in the Tower
Possessed the courtyard. They were changing guard,
Soldiers in line, young English countrymen,
Fair-haired and ruddy, in white tunics.
Drums And fifes were playing 'The British Grenadiers'.
The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

 

Edward Thomas - the sprained ankle poems.

Laid low with a badly sprained ankle, Edward Thomas was writing poems at a great rate. He once said he wrote well when in pain.
A Private, written on 6th and 7th January, has the first reference, I think, to the war, and it seems he altered it from its first draft, which referred to 'an old man' and implied the Boer war. What a powerful message it gives about those thousands lost and never found, or unrecognizable.

 

Pictures by Nick Hedges

      

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors

Many a frosty night, and merrily

Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:

'At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush,' said he,

'I slept.' None knew which bush. Above the town,

Beyond 'The Drover', a hundred spot the down

In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps

More sound in France—that, too, he secret keeps.

 

 

Snow

Snow

As Edna Longley comments, this is a traditional folk idea but the oxymorons of 'gloom of whiteness' and 'dusky brightness' darken the metaphor.

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: "Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Happy New Year.

A hundred years ago Edward Thomas was in full flow, writing poetry but keeping it  quiet.

After Christmas with Edward's parents in London, the family came back to Steep on the 2nd, and Edward headed for the study, surely to work on his New Year poem, written on the 1st January.  Sprinting back down the Shoulder of Mutton hill for lunch he sprained his ankle badly, an injury which was not entirely healed for four months. He was confined to bed for some time, then confined to the cottage.

Yew Tree Cottage, Steep

Here is an extract from the novel: .

So much taken from him, denied him, because of one unlucky step as he ran down the hill – his foot landed on a stone and twisted sideways. He fell headlong onto the short turf as the sheep scattered.

He was confined to bed, quite immobile. Helen had to do everything for him. A fine beginning to the New Year! A last visit to the Frosts at Ryton had to be cancelled; no one came to see him, not even Eleanor or his mother. The most he could do was crawl from his bed and sit in a deck-chair in the bedroom, where the east window looked out on the wintry garden. There he could write; he wrote about a ploughman he knew who’d been killed in France, and about the time last June when their train to Ledbury stopped at a station with an odd name – Adlestrop.

Memory must be his source – his memory and his field notebooks, which he had Helen fetch from the Cockshott Lane study. He had always kept a notebook, everywhere he went, and the detail, the thoughts he’d had, the conversations with solitary strangers on the road, fed him with ideas. Often he told himself that if he stopped using notebooks, if he only looked, allowed himself to experience what he encountered, it would be better. It might free him from that sense he often had that he was nothing but a remote observer, a ghost invisible to other people. Perhaps, too, without a notebook, he would remember only the poignant, vital aspects of what he encountered instead of losing that significance in a mass of detail. But he could not break the habit now – it was part of who he was.

He was longing to be out of the house, and further, to be over the hills, beyond the horizon. He was tired of the view from the window, tired of the cottage and his own limitation, and of Steep – he needed the sky over high hills, where he could look down on the last house, even on the last of the trees, from a plateau of gorse and furze. To be so tied to the earth, even though he loved it – it was as though he were a fish confined to living among mud and weeds.

 

The Poem:

A Wordsworthian narrative of meeting an old man in a lonely place.

 

HE was the one man I met up in the woods
That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight,
Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much
Of the strange tripod was a man. His body,
Bowed horizontal, was supported equally
By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:
Thus he rested, far less like a man than
His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.
But when I saw it was an old man bent,
At the same moment came into my mind
The games at which boys bend thus, High-Cockalorum,
Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound
Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;
His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's;
He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth
Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year,"
And with his head cast upward sideways Muttered--
So far as I could hear through the trees' roar--
"Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,"
While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.

By contrast, here's Eleanor Farjeon New Year poem.