Edward Thomas 101

The British writer Edward Thomas turned to poetry only three years before his death, but in that short time, he created a body of work that shaped the sensibility of modern poetry. After studying at Oxford University, Thomas became a prolific writer of essays, criticism, biographies, travelogues, fiction, and anything else he might be paid for writing. At age 36, he began writing poetry. This was in 1914, just before World War I; Thomas was killed during the Battle of Arras in April 1917. His output from that short period came to be viewed as some of the most well-regarded and influential English poetry of the 20th century.

A Bridge Between Eras
Considered an important link in the shift from Georgianism to Modernism, Thomas’s poetry features elements of both styles, occasionally within the same poem. The landscape of rural England, a frequent topic of his prose, is also a feature of many poems. “Aspens” and “The Brook,” both rhyming meditations on nature, are more typical of much of the poetry being written at the time, which included elements of formalism as well as idyllic depictions of the countryside. In his most famous poem, “Adlestrop,” Thomas takes in the scenery during the most trivial of moments. On a journey by rail, the train makes a brief, unexplained, unscheduled stop during which nothing happens: “Someone cleared his throat. / No one left and no one came / On the bare platform.” Yet in that moment, the poet uses his vantage point aboard the train to observe the “meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, / No whit less still and lonely fair / Than the high cloudlets in the sky.”

Lurking behind these tranquil, bucolic scenes was an unavoidable darkness. Thomas began writing poetry shortly before the outbreak of World War I, and the impending war loomed large. “The Cherry Trees,” just four lines long, laments a flowery scene worthy of a wedding, wasted because “all that passed are dead.” In “Rain,” the poet finds himself with “nothing but the wild rain / On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me / Remembering again that I shall die.” A scene “In Memoriam (Easter 1915),” another of Thomas’s more well-known poems, shows “the flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood” and brings to mind the men who left for war and that otherwise would have picked the flowers for their sweethearts but now “will do never again.”

Increasingly, Thomas felt a pull toward military service. “The Sun Used to Shine” describes a walk with a friend interrupted by thoughts of the war, acknowledging they were far enough removed that “our eyes / / Could as well imagine the Crusades / Or Caesar’s battles.” Thomas’s guilt at enjoying the countryside while others fought to protect it grew stronger. Feeling compelled to defend his country while recognizing the futility of war, he struggled to decide whether to enlist. A similar struggle is found in “The Sign-Post,” in which a fork in the road is met with “I read the sign. Which way shall I go? / A voice says: You would not have doubted so / At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn / Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.”

A Literary Friendship
In a chance encounter, Thomas befriended a then-unknown American poet and forged one of the most significant literary friendships of the era. Thomas met Robert Frost shortly before he began writing poetry—a move Frost supported and encouraged. The two were known to take frequent long walks in the English countryside, discussing life, poetry, and the looming war. When the war broke out, Frost returned to the United States, and Thomas remained to plot his course. Sometime later, Frost sent a copy of “The Road Not Taken,” intended as playful teasing of Thomas’s indecisive tendencies during their walks together. Thomas, at the height of his personal conflict, did not see the humor in the poem.

War Time
Thomas joined the Artist Rifles, a volunteer light infantry unit, in July 1915. Although he wrote only a few overt war poems, many of his poems deal with the psychological effects of war and the death it caused. The one true war poem, “This is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong,” is a personal justification for a world war: “I hate not Germans, nor grow hot / With love of Englishmen, to please newspapers.” Another poem, “The Trumpet,” is more of a straightforward call to arms, and “No one cares less than I [Bugle Call]” is a darker take, with the author signing to the daily bugle call “No one cares less than I / Nobody knows but God, / Whether I am destined to lie / Under a foreign clod.” With death surrounding him, Thomas wrote several poems meditating on his own demise. Among the best are “I Never Saw that Land Before” (“I should use, as the trees and birds did, / A language not to be betrayed”) and “Lights Out”: “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.” His poem “The Owl,” which describes “the bird’s voice / Speaking for all who lay under the stars, / Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice,” is considered one of his greatest, most read poems.

Thomas advanced to become a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He transferred to France for the Battle of Arras, a five-week engagement that ended with a stalemate and resulted in nearly 300,000 casualties. He was killed on the first day of the battle, April 9, 1917, while the first edition of his Poems (1917) was being prepared for press.

Thomas’s Poetry Today
In recent decades, Thomas has taken a more central place in early-20th-century British poetry. Matthew Hollis examines Thomas’s important friendship with Robert Frost in Now All Roads Lead to France (2011), and their letters are collected in Matthew Spencer’s critical edition, Elected Friends (2004). A flurry of recent collected volumes of Thomas’s poetry and prose, a biography by scholar Jean Moorcroft Wilson, and a play based on his life, The Dark Earth and the Light Sky (2012), have helped bring Thomas out of Frost’s shadow, and Thomas’s poems are taught increasingly today.