Poems by Edward Thomas — Poems by Edward Thomas Section 5

IT was a perfect day For sowing; just As sweet and dry was the ground As tobacco-dust.

I tasted deep the hour Between the far Owl's chuckling first soft cry And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;

Nothing undone Remained; the early seeds All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain, Windless and light, Half a kiss, half a tear, Saying good-night.

WHEN WE TWO WALKED

WHEN we two walked in Lent We imagined that happiness Was something different And this was something less.

But happy were we to hide Our happiness, not as they were Who acted in their pride Juno and Jupiter: For the Gods in their jealousy Murdered that wife and man, And we that were wise live free To recall our happiness then.

IN MEMORIAM (Easter, 1915) 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.

FIFTY FAGGOTS

THERE they stand, on their ends, the fifty faggots That once were underwood of hazel and ash In Jenny Pinks's Copse.

Now, by the hedge Close packed, they make a thicket fancy alone Can creep through with the mouse and wren.

Next Spring A blackbird or a robin will nest there, Accustomed to them, thinking they will remain Whatever is for ever to a bird: This Spring it is too late; the swift has come.

'Twas a hot day for carrying them up: Better they will never warm me, though they must Light several Winters' fires.

Before they are done The war will have ended, many other things Have ended, maybe, that I can no more Foresee or more control than robin and wren.

WOMEN HE LIKED

WOMEN he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob, Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but he Loved horses.

He himself was like a cob, And leather-coloured.

Also he loved a tree.

For the life in them he loved most living things, But a tree chiefly.

All along the lane He planted elms where now the stormcock sings That travellers hear from the slow-climbing train.

Till then the track had never had a name For all its thicket and the nightingales That should have earned it.

No one was to blame.

To name a thing beloved man sometimes fails.