Thursday 30 May 2013

Thomas the poet

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh poet and essayist. He is commonly considered a war poet,

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again

. although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.
This poem is one of the few poems that really hit me , I think its brilliant.
Adlestrop

Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
1Mi piace ·  · Promuovi · 

No comments:

Post a Comment