"Early One Morning,: by Edward Thomas

"After You Speak," by Edward Thomas

"Like the Touch of Rain," by Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas, part two--or Ulex europæus

Since last I posted about Edward Thomas, I took a walk--or an "urban hike." A walk (or similar kind of basic exercise) has to be one of the least expensive, most effective elixirs. The body and mind say, "Hey, thanks for the walk."

Thomas liked to walk, too; more specifically, as Peter Sachs writes in the intro to the collection I'm reading, Thomas liked roads, walking them. My sense is his average distances were much longer than mine, and his roads were "country," whereas mine (at the moment) are urban/suburban. Here's part of a poem by Thomas that seems to have sprung from a walk:

[from] The Lofty Sky

by Edward Thomas

Today I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:--
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where naught deters
The desire of the the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.


Thomas seems to have wanted to get some height on this walk. The poem could be placed in tradition of "prospect" poems in which the speaker looks out over a "prospect" or a landscape. Lots of these got written in the late 18th/early 19th century, although it's hard to imagine any poetic era anywhere that didn't include such poems. You know, you take a walk, you reach a perch of some kind, you look, you see, and later you remember and write. Or maybe you write on the spot. That never worked for me.

By the way, according to the OED online, "furze" is a popular name for Ulex europæus, which is a thorny evergreen bush that has yellow flowers (according the OED) and is also called "gorse" by some. By gee, by gosh, by gorse, by golly, by gum.

Happy Mother's Day (which originated in an anti-war movement, incidentally--you knew that), and happy walking or otherwise basic-exercising, and no, you don't need find a big ol' hill. Huff, puff.

One from Edward Thomas

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The poetry of Edward Thomas (1878-1917) is often grouped with that of other World War I British poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegried Sassoon, chiefly because Thomas was killed in the war (he volunteered for the army, as he was too old to be drafted), but also because he did write a few poems when he was serving in France, before he was killed by artillery-fire.

But most of his poetry concerns rural Britain, is closely observed, and--although it deploys conventional rhyme and meter--is plainspoken. Thomas made his living chiefly as a "literary journalist"--writing reviews, editing anthologies, etc., and he was an early champion of Robert Frost's poetry. Thomas liked the way Frost had ignored a lot of conventional poetic diction and written precisely but plainly. Thomas himself first published his poetry under a pen-name. Then, after Thomas's death, Walter de la Mare put together a collection. I've been reading a relatively new paperback edition from Handsdel Books, with a nice introduction by Peter Sacks.

Here's a short poem related to May from the book:

The Cherry Trees

by Edward Thomas

The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.

Did I mention that, like Frost, Thomas could be a bit glum, even before World War I came along?

Snow-Poems

It's been snowing in Tacoma today. Snow in Tacoma is big news because usually this part of Washingston gets snow only once or twice a Winter, and even then, not much. Of course, in a city that's not used to snow, people react and over-react to it in a variety of ways. They don't necessarily know how best to drive automobiles in the stuff. They tend to go too fast. At the same time, snow seems to make a lot of people happy. I was getting my hair cut today when someone, not the hair-cutter, asked me, "What do you think of the snow?" "Well," I said, "I grew up around snow, so I associate it with shoveling." She seemed disappointed in my reaction, so I tried to meet her part-way. "But it sure provides a change from our usual gray Winter," I said. "It's pretty." "Yes," she said, brightening, "it's pretty." I gathered that most of the hair-cutters weren't able to show up that day because of the snow, especially if they lived in those notorious "outlying areas" that weather-persons seem to like to discuss. There always seems to be more snow in the outlying areas, not just in the "higher elevations." If you live in an outlying area that is also at a higher elevation, then the weather-person takes a very grave attitude toward your situation.

Anyway, I got to thinking about well known snow poems.

The first one that came to mind was the one I had to memorize and recite in 4th grade: "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." It's one of those Robert Frost poems that appeals to a broad range of readers. Those poets who like it probably like it first because of its technical brilliance. The combination of formal rhythm and speech rhythm works well, and the interlocking rhymes seem close to perfect. Repeating that line at the end really is a superb move, too. I've never sense anything forced in the poem. The scene and narrative are simple and accessible, so the poem works at almost every level of education, but they are also suggestive enough to tempt interpreters. When I studied the poem again in college, I discovered that some critics thought the poem to be about death. To me, this interpretation was not and is not persuasive.

Other snow-poems include Wallace Stevens' "The Snow Man," Basho's "First Snow," Billy Collins' "Snow Day," Richard Brautigan's "The First Winter Snow," and William Carlos Williams' "Hunter's in the Snow," which, if memory serves, is an ekphrastic poem insofar as it concerns (in part) Breughel's painting of the same name. In fact, I think the poem may be in the book Pictures from Breughel, which earned Williams a Pulitzer Prize--his only one, I think. Tobias Wolff has a short story by the same name. It's a well written story, but also a cold-blooded one that echoes Hemingway insofar as it seems to have disdain for the characters in it, as Hemingway's "Francis MacComber" story does, too, at least in my opinion.

My goodness, I wonder how many Russian and Swedish poems there are about snow. Canadian, too. On a site called "The Canadian Poetry Archive," I just found a snow-poem by a person named Archibald Lampman. The poem is pretty good, and the poet's name is to die for. "Hello. My name is Archibald Lampman, and as you might have already guessed, I'm a poet."

Louis MacNiece has a poem called simply "Snow," and so does Edward Thomas. Robert Graves wrote called "Like Snow." Another Billy Collins one is "Shoveling Snow with Buddha."

Those venerable American poets Longfellow and Whittier wrote snow-poems, as did Edna St. Vincent Millay: "The Snow Storm."

But I keep thinking I'm forgetting a very important snow-poem, one even more obvious and famous than some of the ones already mentioned. Some figurative snow is piling up in drifts near my memory, however, and my memory is preoccupied. It thinks it may have to go out and shovel some snow soon.