[Maryann Corbett]

Thanks for that note, Clive. I hope it's still true that Gerry Cambridge looks in here from time to time.

[Lance Levens]

Edward Thomas' "The Owl" is a favorite of mine. Edward Hirsch did a write up of it in his collection Poet's Choice. Thomas wrote 142 poems; none were published in his lifetime. His friend, Walter de la Mare, said he had a "compassionate and suffering heart." Thanks Petra and Clive and all who have commented.

[Tim Murphy]

I knew Thomas only as a correspondent of Frost until Clive and I spent some time together in England. Immediately upon my return to the States, I received from Clive, Thomas' poems, a very treasured volume to be sure. Clive's essay in TDH is very fine. Clive is an inveterate walker of the English countryside, so Edward Thomas is very much part of his "calling."

[Gail White]

Petra, can you find a love poem by Thomas in which, after expressing profound esteem at considerable length, he regrets that he is left
"with only gratitude
instead of love:
a lone pine tree
cradling a dove." ?

(I really need to buy the complete poems of this guy.)

[Petra Norr]

Found it, Gail. (-:

No One So Much As You
by Edward Thomas


No one so much as you
Loves this my clay,
Or would lament as you
Its dying day.

You know me through and through
Though I have not told,
And though with what you know
You are not bold.

None ever was so fair
As I thought you:
Not a word can I bear
Spoken against you.

All that I ever did
For you seemed coarse
Compared with what I hid
Nor put in force.

My eyes scarce dare meet you
Lest they should prove
I but respond to you
And do not love.

We look and understand,
We cannot speak
Except in trifles and
Words the most weak.

For I at most accept
Your love, regretting
That is all: I have kept
Only a fretting

That I could not return
All that you gave
And could not ever burn
With the love you have,

Till sometimes it did seem
Better it were
Never to see you more
Than linger here

With only gratitude
Instead of love –
A pine in solitude
Cradling a dove.
.

[Gregory Dowling]

Following up on Tim's reference to the friendship with Frost, there are two fine poems by Frost worth mentioning here - or three, if we include "The Road Not Taken", which Frost first sent to Thomas, and which drew on memories of country-walks with him. The other two are the elegy he wrote, with the explicit title "To E. T.", and "Iris by Night". I posted this latter poem on a thread on Georgian poetry a little while ago, but it's a beautiful poem that isn't as well-known as it should be and so deserves re-posting. It's also a wonderful tribute to Thomas, and celebrates a walk they took together:

Iris by Night
by Robert Frost

One misty evening, one another’s guide,
We two were groping down a Malvern side
The last wet fields and dripping hedges home.
There came a moment of confusing lights,
Such as according to belief in Rome
Were seen of old at Memphis on the heights
Before the fragments of a former sun
Could concentrate anew and rise as one.
Light was a paste of pigment in our eyes.
And then there was a moon and then a scene
So watery as to seem submarine;
In which we two stood saturated, drowned.
The clover-mingled rowan on the ground
Had taken all the water it could as dew,
And still the air was saturated too,
Its airy pressure turned to water weight.
Then a small rainbow like a trellis gate,
A very small moon-made prismatic bow,
Stood closely over us through which to go.
And then we were vouchsafed the miracle
That never yet to other two befell
And I alone of us have lived to tell.
A wonder! Bow and rainbow as it bent,
Instead of moving with us as we went,
(To keep the pots of gold from being found)
It lifted from its dewy pediment
Its two mote-swimming many-colored ends,
And gathered them together in a ring.
And we two stood in it softly circled round
From all division time or foe can bring
In a relation of elected friends.

[A. E. Stallings]

I love Edward Thomas. I did a Christmas-themed blog spot on Harriet a couple years back on "The Owl," which, along with "Out in the Dark," is my favorite of his. (Basically, I think "The Owl," set to music, would make a beautiful Christmas carol.) I am not sure what has happened to the formatting to my blog posts in the meantime, but anyway, for what it is worth:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harr...07/12/the-owl/

I too am grateful to Clive, for a deeper understanding of this poet.