Edward Thomas - Selected Poems

by Edward Thomas, Barnaby Edwards (Narrator), Textbook Stuff (Producer)

READ BY BARNABY EDWARDS

Duration: 2 hours

Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was an English poet, biographer and literary critic. A contemporary of Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas was encouraged to write verse by the American poet Robert Frost. He was working on his debut collection, to be published under the pseudonym ‘Edward Eastway’, when he was killed in action in France in April 1917.

His work combines a romantic but unsentimental love of the countryside with a brutally honest depiction of the horrors of the Great War.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 20th Century, Fiction

Audiobook

First published October 1, 1964

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.

His Works:

Poetry collections:

Six Poems, under pseudonym Edward Eastaway, Pear Tree Press, 1916.
Poems, Holt, 1917.
Last Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1918.
Collected Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1920.
Two Poems, Ingpen & Grant, 1927.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, R. George Thomas (ed), Oxford University Press, 1978
Poemoj (Esperanto translation), Kris Long (ed & pub), Burleigh Print, Bracknell, Berks, 1979.
Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England, Elaine Wilson (ed), Paul & Co., 1985.
The Poems of Edward Thomas, Peter Sacks (ed), Handsel Books, 2003.
The Annotated Collected Poems, Edna Longley (ed), Bloodaxe Books, 2008.

Fiction:

The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (novel), 1913

Essay collections:

Horae Solitariae, Dutton, 1902.
Oxford, A & C Black, 1903.
Beautiful Wales, Black, 1905.
The Heart of England, Dutton, 1906.
The South Country, Dutton, 1906 (reissued by Tuttle, 1993).
Rest and Unrest, Dutton, 1910.
Light and Twilight, Duckworth, 1911.
The Last Sheaf, Cape, 1928.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Do I remember Adlestrop?

This was one of my A-Level set texts. Now, in hindsight, it seems absolutely crazy that I sat down and read these and worse wrote essays and even worse essays with opinions when I knew nothing of his context as a poet, of his work as a literary editor or of his friendship with Robert Frost (some similarities between their verse hovers on the edge of my consciousness) and how easy it is to forget what span of time Frost's life encompassed, from the first world war to President Kennedy's inauguration . The Road Not Taken was apparently inspired by a woodland walk the two of them took together involving a quarrel with a gamekeeper, this walk and the conversation the two men had, it has been suggested, lead eventually to Thomas' decision to join the British army which in turn lead to his death at the front during WWI.

Still it says something about us that we ask students to write about these things and value them when they give the appearance of having a suitable knowledge of the author and their context, beyond what they might reasonably had, even if they had been reading The Children's Book.

There is though pleasure in these things when pieces fall into place over time, and the whole makes a new kind of sense, even when one sits on a train in a country station on one occasion for longer than expected.

Reading Selected Poems and Prose brought me back to his poetry and I notice how grim his tone mostly is, he thinks he sees snowbells in one poem but then realises what he sees are the sun bleached shells of dead snails, there are some nice poems about what he would like to bequeath himhis daughters and wife then I think, hang on such gifts are generally made in the context of one's own death! Lyrical poems deal with abandoned farm buildings and felled trees leaving one with a taste of decay and loss. There is isolation and alienation in the midst of nature, the thought that one may remember a moment as pleasant with it the suggestion that he does not experience it as happy. Motion I felt gave him some relief from his own unquiet mind but not enough, maybe cycling was the pastime that might have suited him better or like some of his contemporaries paganism or homosexuality, because his life as he lived it did not seem to have suited him too well.

He has a delightfully keen eye but I don't recommend him for those in search of joy or peace outside the grave.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a fascinating collection and insight into the genesis, craft, development and the mind of an author. Thomas seemingly began as a literary reviewer and critic, progressing to write books on commission and then prose and eventually verse (often revisiting works of prose to form the basis of verse). Indeed it took Thomas until he was 36 until he wrote his first poem in 1914 – ‘Up in The Wind’.

Thomas suffered from, was diagnosed with and treated for depression and indeed did make preparations to end his life on at least two separate occasions. Death seems to be never too far away in many of the themes explored in his poems.

Central themes interwoven throughout Thomas’ poetry and key to his work are England and the primarily the English countryside. Indeed his decision to enlist to fight in the Great War appears to have been motivated be his overwhelming desire to protect the English land and countryside.

Whilst England and the countryside are ever present in many of Thomas’ poems, they are explored in a meaningful, powerful and affecting way and I don’t think in a way that could be considered as in any way self-indulgent or twee.

The poetry that stands out the most from this collection for me as follows:

The Other
Snow
Lob
In Memoriam (Easter 1915)
The Bridge
I built myself a house of glass
Words
As the teams head brass
No one cares less than I
The sun used to shine
The Gallows
Gone gone again

Of the stronger earlier writings: Insomnia and Rain – the latter being a very powerful meditation on depression (written whilst Thomas was suffering from it at the time).

Two minor observations:
‘After You Speak’ contains the line: ‘Like a black star’ – a possible reference point for David Bowie?
‘The Gallows’ – a possible precursor for some of Ted Hughes work?

At the end of this collection, are fascinating and moving excerpts from Thomas’ diary, which was undiscovered until the 1970’s (Thomas tragically died in the Battle of Arras in 1917). The final pages of which include the draft of a poem.

As with other poets of the Great War and beyond the obvious personal and human tragedy, is the loss of all the great literary works that would undoubtedly have otherwise been produced.

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.therapythroughtolstoy.com/...

Thomas's poetry so beautifully encapsulates what England means to him, but also questions deeper concerns of belonging and nationality. Thomas felt torn between London, where his work and writing circles were based, and the English countryside that he commemorates in his writing. Yet Thomas's Welsh heritage led him to doubt whether he could truly be "English". He felt that living in England
was “like a homesickness, but stronger”, and the closest he could feel to belonging was by spending time in nature: “I was home: one nationality/ We had, I and the birds that sang,/ One memory” (Home [3] 4-6).

It is the birds and trees that “welcomed [the speaker]” after he had “come back […] from somewhere far” (7-8), perhaps when others didn’t. “Nationality” in this poem is also a fluid and evolving concept, rather than fixed. The migratory thrushes that the speaker relates to (“they knew no more than I/ The day was done” ([17-18]) would have recently returned from Southern Europe, the month being April. This figurative framework of national identity does not allow for displacement; a “single nationality” is constantly shared and members are always “welcomed” back.

I've never found a poet that has better expressed my views of the English countryside, nor one that can depict the complex feelings and emotions I've felt in the past. "Rain" is probably the poem by Thomas that resonates most with me, and I'll be sure to return to it for a long time to come.

[Ben Doeh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the greatest English nature poet after Wordsworth. Also one of the exceptionally talented war poets (Owen, Rosenberg, Gurney, Thomas are the finest in my opinion). Except it doesn't read like war poetry because it's so deeply bound up with Thomas's love of English landscapes - the soil, the wind, rivers, coombes, his countrymen the birds (not the jingoists whom he despised) - that it's also nature poetry. Then that recurrent phrase "the dead", and that hovering sense behind the intense images of permanence, that there's a constant threat of
dissolution.

Since ET wrote all 140 poems in an extraordinary 26 months at the end of his 39 year life, this judicious selection also includes some of his finest prose from his many years as a journalist and writer, and then extracts from the stubbornly affecting war diary. Matthew Hollis has done a superb job so that it feels more intimate and personal than most poetry selections.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

I throughly enjoyed this collection of poetry. There definitely were a few that stood out more to me: The Owl, Interval, Like the Touch of Rain, Rain, The Thrush, What will they do? and Beauty. I definitely recommed this collection of poetry to anyone who enjoys poetry or has a love of it.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s really hard to frame in a goodreads review the picture I’m building in my mind the more WW1 poetry/biographies of said poets I read. The jarring (in a constructive way) thing about this collection is that the majority of it is his 17 year old writings in the countryside, up to his fully-formed adult poetry. (The fact that he didn’t write poetry and didn’t consider himself a poet till so late in life will never cease to surprise me given how good he is.) And, after a full 150 pages of pastoral poems and notes, much of which is about the area where I live, to then see this beautiful poet dropped onto the battlefield and talking about the “machine fun corps” and strafing and shelling, it just gives you such a sense of how each and every person that died on the battlefield did not belong there. It is easy, given that we always refer to the “soldiers” of WW1 and 2, to imagine that these people who fought and died had been in the army, trained for many years and were just waiting to be posted to see some action, the way we think about soldiers and the military nowadays. But Edward Thomas, like the many, many other men who were also killed, was not a particularly young man any more, he had a wife and 3 children, he’d been to university and had a career in literary criticism and was finding footing writing poetry about the countryside, and exchanging letters with his friend Robert Frost. And then he reluctantly enlisted towards the end of the war, stuck in terrible, cold conditions and promptly blown up. His war diary towards the end feels so incongruous next to his poetry from before, and that is what is so important about it. It serves as a reminder of just how much was sacrificed, by so many people who weren’t natural born fighters and hardly had time to look around and see what kind of topsy turvy surreality their world had become before they were killed.

I’ve not really actually talked much about the content of the book here - safe to say, he has a lovely sense of rhyme and metre, and poetry that magnifies and appreciates the countryside is my favourite kind. It’s a shame that Edward Thomas is one of the lesser of the well-known war poets (I suppose as he didn’t actually write any war poetry in that sense) however he is wonderful and worth reading - I want to read his biography next.

3.5/5 stars

[Mimi Carstairs · Rating 4 out of 5]

My absolute favourite poet; Hollis' selection certainly did not disappoint! A great many of my favourites featured, as well as many I had never read before. The selection showcased Thomas' nature poetry in an accessible manner, which I greatly appreciated. I also enjoyed the diary entries from Thomas' brief time in the war, as well as the extensive notes on individual poems.

My favourite has to be "Rain", a deeply melancholic look on the emotional effects of World War One on the soldiers-in-training.

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

A wonderful collection. I would urge everyone to read Thomas' work as he truly was a master poet.

[August · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the audiobook version of Edward Thomas poetical works. Barnaby Edwards does a good job with the reading.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hollis writes in the introduction that “Edward Thomas was a poet of strong gentleness, long in quick thinking. His poems rarely resolve; they avoid convenience, mistrust rhetoric and ostentation, and have the effect of lingering on the senses as a scent does or a thought on its way towards completion. He chose the phrase rather than the foot as his unit of composition, and would frequently break his rhythm inventively across his line-endings in ways that conjured the effect of a perpetually forming moment.” I think this description has merit. I found his poems something of a Clare modernized, and similar in effect to Frost. Three poems really stood out to me as my favorites within this collection.

“Beauty”

What does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease,
No man, woman, or child, alive could please
Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh
Because I sit and frame an epitaph –
‘Here lies all that no one loved of him
And that loved no one.’ Then in a trice that whim
Has wearied. But, though I am like a river
At fall of evening while it seems that never
Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while
Cross breezes cut the surface to a file,
This heart, some fraction of me, happily
Floats through the window even now to a tree
Down in the misting, dim-lit, quiet vale,
Not like a pewit that returns to wail
For something it has lost, but like a dove
That slants unswerving to its home and love.
There I find my rest, as though the dusk air
Flies what yet lives in me: Beauty is there.

“First known when lost”

I never had noticed it until
‘Twas gone, - the narrow copse
Where now the woodman lops
The last of the willows with his bill.

It was not more than a hedge overgrown.
One meadow’s breadth away
I passed it day by day.
Now the soil was bare as a bone,

And black betwixt two meadows green,
Though fresh-cut faggot ends
Of hazel made some amends
With a gleam as if flowers they had been.

Strange it could have hidden so near!
And now I see as I look
That the small winding brook,
A tributary’s tributary, rises there.

“I built myself a house of glass”

I built myself a house of glass:
It took me years to make it:
And I was proud. But now, alas,
Would God someone would break it.

But it looks too magnificent.
No neighbor casts a stone
From where he dwells, in tenement
Or palace of glass, alone.

See my other reviews here!

[Steph De Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thomas' "Adlestrop" is one of my favourite poems of all time, and one of only a very few that has ever brought tears to my eyes. After reading (and being blown away by) "Rain" and "The Cherry Trees" a couple of years ago, I knew I had to seek out more of his work. To my delight, "Selected Poems" is a beautiful collection, and I now have a long list of Thomas' poetry marked to re-read frequently, including "In Memoriam (Easter 1915), "Lights Out", and "The Sun Used to Shine."

I was particularly intrigued to learn that Thomas began by writing short prose passages, primarily descriptions of beauty in nature, some of which he later transformed into poetry. I'm glad that the editor of this collection chose to include both versions of several titles, as it provides a fascinating insight into the way in which Thomas approached, and honed, his craft.

Thomas demonstrates in these poems an astonishing ability to convey a great depth of multi-faceted emotion and meaning in a few short lines. Many, like "Adlestrop" and "Cherry Trees" are achingly sad and hauntingly beautiful, their brevity making them the emotional equivalent of a sucker-punch. His love of the English countryside gleams through every line, a continuous strand of purity and light woven into themes of death and the Great War. Indeed, I can't help but wonder if Sebastian Faulks had Thomas in mind when writing his World War I novel "Birdsong": the final pages of this collection record the poet's war diaries, in which, stationed near Arras just days before his death, he delights in the beauty of nature, and particularly in hearing the blackbirds sing.

Some readers may, perhaps, read this collection and not be profoundly moved by it. I am not, however, one of them; I'll be reading this again soon.

[Gareth Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting these poems of a rural life mostly lost. Written before the First World War, one might think they are separated by a gulf from modern experience. in some ways, this is true, as they depict a landscape much changed, but beginning to change even then.
Nevertheless, the fear of change, the lament for those lost to is, the abiding sense of melancholy, all these evoke an emotional response - an admission that we too have felt like this.
There are phrases of great beauty. I will quote just one:
‘The waters running frizzled over gravel,
That never vanish but forever travel.’

[Helene Harrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review - I read this when I was in high school as part of a module on War Literature, but what really brought it home to me was a trip to northern France and Belgium on a tour of war sites i.e. Menin Gate, Thiepval, etc. There is no better way to get a sense of the barbarity, loss and incredible strength in the First World War than by reading these poems in one of the places where men sacrificed themselves or are buried underfoot.

General Subject/s? - World War One / Poetry / War Poetry / Literature

Recommend? – Yes

Rating - 20/20

[Olga Rojas · Rating 3 out of 5]

No es mi cup of tea la verdad. Es naturalista y tal.
Una casa roja me trae un poco manic pero todo correcto
Además tiene una metáfora muy chula del césped como escorpion grass (me pareció reveladora la comparación)

[Ruth Brumby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such apparent simplicity, caused by careful word choice and excellent use of rhythm and rhyme. Careful accurate observation and sparse explanation of thoughts. These are really worth reading over and over.

[Barbara Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some fine work amongst this collection.

[Fiona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly poignant, and Thomas’ final diary entries brought tears to my eye.

This collection is beautifully presented and an absolute delight to hold with its subtly textured surface.

[Elvis Gregory-sayce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved Reading This
Lovely Poetry
Found Some New Favourites

Highly Recommended

[Allan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have enjoyed this volume of poems from one of the "war poets"- although none of his poems were ever written from the trenches. He died in France in 1917 after just 3 months at the Front. His poems are filled with lots of countryside imagery and wonderful observations of nature and country people. Thomas is a perceptive writer and he produces evocative pictures, albeit generally with an undercurrent of melancholy (he struggled with depression). Adelstrop remains my favourite:
"Yes. I remember Adelstrop-
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 Adelstrop-only the name....."

[Katrine Solvaag · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up the book knowing nothing about Thomas and by the ends I was in love with his words. I'll never be able to look at violets nor snow nor rain the same again. Not to mention the heartbreak of reading his journal entries from his time fighting in the war.

With his simple language Thomas breaks through to the core of what he wants to say, rather than dancing around the bush while throwing about a bunch of complicated, fancy words.

If you are unsure, look up and read at least these poems: "Snow", "The Gallows" and "If I should every by chance".

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Ted Hughes poetry which consisted mostly about nature I wasn't looking forward to reading Edward Thomas's Selected Poems. But after reading this, it pretty much changed my views on poems based around nature. I loved how in every poem Thomas managed to relate nature to every aspect in his poetry, whether it revolving around the themes melancholy or love he depicted it beautifully.

[Annji · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different edition, I think, but still some beautiful language. Steeped in landscape.

[Chloë · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

[Ned Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nature poetry at its very best, beautifully crafted yet simplistic.

[Melanie Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward Thomas is a great British poet - his poetry is resonant with the life of the countryside and reminded me of Vita Sackville-West's poetry ('The Land' in particular) in that respect. Both were writing with experience of life during wartime - the death of Edward Thomas, killed in action on Easter Monday 1917 in Arras, France lends a poignancy to his poetry.
I'm giving this book five stars out of respect for the poet and his poetry, which is unassuming, compassionate, lyrical and honest.