“We … swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of a proud old lineage”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another Thomas:

“But these things also”, Edward Thomas

But these things also are Spring’s—
On banks by the roadside the grass
Long-dead that is greyer now
Than all the Winter it was;

The shell of a little snail bleached
In the grass; chip of flint, and mite
Of chalk; and the small birds’ dung
In splashes of purest white:

All the white things a man mistakes
For earliest violets
Who seeks through Winter’s ruins
Something to pay Winter’s debts,

While the North blows, and starling flocks
By chattering on and on
Keep their spirits up in the mist,
And Spring’s here, Winter’s not gone.


Very much a WWI poem, this. Of possible interest: a succinct analysis.

---L.

Subject quote from The Golden Journey to Samarkand, James Elroy Flecker.

Comments

[moon_custafer]

I grew up in an area that didn't have spring so much as it had three months of muddy trench-warfare between winter and summer, so I appreciate this one.

[larryhammer]

Heh.

[cmcmck]

Fabulous!

I adore Edward Thomas's work

[larryhammer]

Yah.

[puddleshark]

Lovely. Edward Thomas has caught that fever for the first signs of spring perfectly.

[larryhammer]

Indeed

[sunlit_stone]

Oof!

[larryhammer]

And he described it so well.

[thawrecka]

Lovely!

[larryhammer]

Innit?