Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas
British war-era poet, essayist, and literary critic of Welsh heritage. His essay collections include The Heart of England and Light and Twilight; his poetry collections include Six Poems and Last Poems.
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth3 March 1878
books-and-reading dearest face turn
There is not any book/ Or face of dearest look/ That I would not turn from now/ To go into the unknown/ I must enter, and leave, alone,/ I know not how.
choose crack english joy whistle winds
Out of us all/ That make rhymes,/ Will you choose/ Sometimes -/ As the winds use/ A crack in a wall/ Or a drain,/ Their joy or their pain/ To whistle through -/ Choose me,/ You English words?
islands work
We in the Virgin Islands work hard, but we play hard, too.
feed flush kids pool trying water
We feed the kids first. We use the pool water to flush the toilets, ... We are just trying to make things livable.
borders forest sleep
I have come to the borders of sleep,/ The unfathomable deep/ Forest where all must lose/ Their way.
names june afternoon
Yes; I remember Adlestrop- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.
nature dirty men
November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths.... Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.
easter flower home
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.
flower thinking hands
I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.
years glasses house
I built myself a house of glass:It took me years to make it:And I was proud. But now, alas!Would God someone would break it.
lines one-line produce
A merely great intellect can produce prose, but not poetry, not one line.
daughter rose chance
If I should ever by chance grow richI'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,And let them all to my eldest daughter.
men june bird
Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds'The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904
flower winter land
Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed The speculating rooks at their nests cawed And saw from elm tops, delicate as flower of grass, What we below could not see, Winter pass.