Edward Thomas

Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever

I never had noticed it until'Twas gone, - the narrow
Where now the woodman
The last of the willows with his
It was not more than a hedge overgrown

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,

To-day I
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;

An acre of land between the shore and the hills,
Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,
The lovely visible earth and sky and
Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:

But these things also are Spring's -On banks by the roadside the
Long-dead that is greyer
Than all the Winter it was;
The shell of a little snail

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

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

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by
To be cut down by the sharp axe of light, -Out of the night, two cocks together crow,
Cleaving the darkness with a silver blow:
And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand,

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

Women he liked, did shovel-bearded Bob,
Old Farmer Hayward of the Heath, but
Loved horses
He himself was like a

What matter makes my spade for tears or mirth,
Letting down two clay pipes into the earth
The one I smoked, the other a
Of Blenheim,