Edward Thomas

NOW first, as I shut the door,
I was alone
In the new house; and the wind
Began to moan.Old at once was the house,…

IF I should ever by chance grow rich
I'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,
Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,
And let them all to my eldest daughter.…

'He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury
Can't give him more than he undoubtedly
Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!
A lady-killer! Hanging's too good by half…

BRIGHT clouds of may
Shade half the pond.
Beyond,
All but one bay…

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

There they stand, on their ends, the fifty fag
That once were underwood of hazel and
In Jenny Pink's copse.
Now, by the

WILL you come?
Will you come?
Will you ride
So late…

The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the
In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.
This corner of the farmyard I like most:
As well as any…

Running along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path.
It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep,
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the…

The Combe was ever dark, ancient and dark.
Its mouth is stopped with bramble, thorn, and briar;
And no one scrambles over the sliding chalk
By beech and yew and perishing juniper…

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was
And bitterly saying:`Oh,

THE sun blazed while the thunder yet
Added a boom:
A wagtail flickered bright over
The mill-pond's gloom:Less than the cooing in the alder…

Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,

She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone
Her, locked her out of doors at
And had her kittens duly drowned.

he 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.

The green elm with the one great bough of gold
Lets leaves into the grass slip, one by one, —
The short hill grass, the mushrooms small milk-white,
Harebell and scabious and tormentil

Like the touch of rain she was
On a man's flesh and hair and eyes
When the joy of walking thus
Has taken him by surprise:With the love of the storm he burns,…

Three lovely notes he whistled, too soft to be heard
If others sang; but others never sang
In the great beech-wood all that May and June.
No one saw him: I alone could hear him…

IF I were to own this countryside
As far as a man in a day could ride,
And the Tyes were mine for giving or letting,--
Wingle Tye and Margaretting…

SOME eyes condemn the earth they gaze upon:
Some wait patiently till they know far more
Than earth can tell them: some laugh at the whole
As folly of another's making: one…

To-day I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,

THE rock-like mud unfroze a little and rills
Ran and sparkled down each side of the road
Under the catkins wagging in the hedge.
But earth would have her sleep out, spite of the sun;…

The glory of the beauty of the morning, -The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew;
The blackbird that has found it, and the
That tempts me on to something sweeter than love;
White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay;