A POST TO COMMEMORATE THE DEATH OF THE POET EDWARD THOMAS

Today, Tuesday 9th April. is the anniversary of the death of the writer and poet Edward Thomas. He was killed at Arras, France in 1917. He was 37 years old and the poem, The Owl, articulates when he decided to enlist and go to war. A choice he felt he had to make.

I am reading daily, The Wood, The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood by John Lewis-Stempel. It is a diary of his work in the wood and he makes mention of the anniversary of Thomas’s death and includes the poem too.

He says that The Owl was no poet’s posing. Thomas was so connected to nature that he considered his true countrymen to be the birds. Or the trees.

Edward Thomas, it is said, was a true countryman and an owl, finally and irrevocably, convinced him to do his bit for King and Countryside.

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

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.


Acknowledgements: John Lewis-Stempel and to A Dymock Poets Anthology by Linda Hart.