First World War Poetry
Edward Thomas 1878 - 1917
Edward Thomas was 37 when he enlisted in 1915; unlike most of the other war poets, he had a wife and two children when he decided he could no longer sit out the war.
Thomas was a professional reviewer and editor, but it was not until his friend Robert Frost encouraged him that he began writing poetry. Many of his poems--even those dealing with his war experiences--are based on his love of nature and his feeling for the English countryside.
He was killed the day after Easter in 1917.
Some examples of his work:
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.
Gone, Gone Again
Gone, gone again,
May, June, July,
And August gone,
Again gone by,
Not memorable
Save that I saw them go,
As past the empty quays
The rivers flow.
And now again,
In the harvest rain,
The Blenheim oranges
Fall grubby from the trees
As when I was young
And when the lost one was here
And when the war began
To turn young men to dung.
Look at the old house,
Outmoded, dignified,
Dark and untenanted,
With grass growing instead
Of the footsteps of life,
The friendliness, the strife;
In its beds have lain
Youth. love, age, and pain:
I am something like that;
Only I am not dead,
Still breathing and interested
In the house that is not dark:--
I am something like that:
Not one pane to reflect the sun,
For the schoolboys to throw at--
They have broken every one.