A Poem for a Thursday #144

Edward Thomas was an English poet, critic, and biographer. He wrote all his poems over the course of three years (1914-1917) and was much more widely known as a prose writer during his lifetime. His poems are evocative of the English countryside and have a nostalgic, musing tone to them. He is known as a war poet even though few of his poems directly deal with the war. Thomas is commemorated in Westminster Abbey’s Poets Corner.

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.

Adlestrop 
Edward Thomas