Adlestrop
by Edward Thomas

English poet. He made his living by writing commissioned books, many of which were about English country life. He also wrote biographies and criticism, including a life of the writer and naturalist Richard Jefferies, whom he much admired, and studies of Swinburne (1909) and Walter Pater (1913). The poems for which he is famous were written during the First World War; they appeared in Six Poems (1916), Poems (1917) and Collected Poems (1920).

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Adlestrop
by Edward Thomas

Yes. I remember Adlestrop -
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

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Adlestrop by Edward Thomas