Poems by Edward Thomas — Poems by Edward Thomas Section 10

LIBERTY

THE last light has gone out of the world, except This moonlight lying on the grass like frost Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow It is as if everything else had slept Many an age, unforgotten and lost The men that were, the things done, long ago, All I have thought; and but the moon and I Live yet and here stand idle over the grave Where all is buried.

Both have liberty To dream what we could do if we were free To do some thing we had desired long, The moon and I. There's none less free than who Does nothing and has nothing else to do, Being free only for what is not to his mind, And nothing is to his mind.

If every hour Like this one passing that I have spent among The wiser others when I have forgot To wonder whether I was free or not, Were piled before me, and not lost behind, And I could take and carry them away I should be rich; or if I had the power To wipe out every one and not again Regret, I should be rich to be so poor.

And yet I still am half in love with pain, With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth, With things that have an end, with life and earth, And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.

NOVEMBER

NOVEMBER'S days are thirty: November's earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last;

And the prettiest things on ground are the paths With morning and evening hobnails dinted, With foot and wing-tip overprinted Or separately charactered, Of little beast and little bird.

The fields are mashed by sheep, the roads Make the worst going, the best the woods Where dead leaves upward and downward scatter.

Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.

But of all the months when earth is greener Not one has clean skies that are cleaner.

Clean and clear and sweet and cold, They shine above the earth so old, While the after-tempest cloud Sails over in silence though winds are loud, Till the full moon in the east Looks at the planet in the west And earth is silent as it is black, Yet not unhappy for its lack.

Up from the dirty earth men stare: One imagines a refuge there Above the mud, in the pure bright Of the cloudless heavenly light: Another loves earth and November more dearly Because without them, he sees clearly, The sky would be nothing more to his eye Than he, in any case, is to the sky;

He loves even the mud whose dyes Renounce all brightness to the skies.

THE SHEILING

IT stands alone Up in a land of stone All worn like ancient stairs, A land of rocks and trees Nourished on wind and stone.

And all within Long delicate has been;

By arts and kindliness Coloured, sweetened, and warmed For many years has been.

Safe resting there Men hear in the travelling air But music, pictures see In the same daily land Painted by the wild air.

One maker's mind Made both, and the house is kind To the land that gave it peace, And the stone has taken the house To its cold heart and is kind.

THE GALLOWS

THERE was a weasel lived in the sun With all his family, Till a keeper shot him with his gun And hung him up on a tree, Where he swings in the wind and rain, In the sun and in the snow, Without pleasure, without pain, On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a crow who was no sleeper, But a thief and a murderer Till a very late hour; and this keeper Made him one of the things that were, To hang and flap in rain and wind, In the sun and in the snow.

There are no more sins to be sinned On the dead oak tree bough.

There was a magpie, too, Had a long tongue and a long tail;

He could both talk and do-- But what did that avail?

He, too, flaps in the wind and rain Alongside weasel and crow, Without pleasure, without pain, On the dead oak tree bough.

And many other beasts And birds, skin, bone and feather, Have been taken from their feasts And hung up there together, To swing and have endless leisure In the sun and in the snow, Without pain, without pleasure, On the dead oak tree bough.

BIRDS' NESTS

THE summer nests uncovered by autumn wind.

Some torn, others dislodged, all dark.

Everyone sees them: low or high in tree, Or hedge, or single bush, they hang like a mark.

Since there's no need of eyes to see them with I cannot help a little shame That I missed most, even at eye's level, till The leaves blew off and made the seeing no game.

'Tis a light pang.

I like to see the nests Still in their places, now first known, At home and by far roads.

Boys knew them not, Whatever jays and squirrels may have done.

And most I like the winter nests deep-hid That leaves and berries fell into;

Once a dormouse dined there on hazel-nuts, And grass and goose-grass seeds found soil and grew.