Celandine
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).
Celandine
by Edward Thomas
|
|
Thinking of her had saddened me at first,
Until I saw the sun on the celandines lie
Redoubled, and she stood up like a flame,
A living thing, not what before I nursed,
The shadow I was growing to love almost,
The phantom, not the creature with bright eye
That I had thought never to see, once lost. She found the celandines of February
Always before us all. Her nature and name
Were like those flowers, and now immediately
For a short swift eternity back she came,
Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore
Her brightest bloom among the winter hues
Of all the world; and I was happy too,
Seeing the blossoms and the maiden who
Had seen them with me Februarys before,
Bending to them as in and out she trod
And laughed, with locks sweeping the mossy sod. But this was a dream; the flowers were not true,
Until I stooped to pluck from the grass there
One of five petals and I smelt the juice
Which made me sigh, remembering she was no more,
Gone like a never perfectly recalled air.
|
