Adlestrop

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.

An express train stops for a minute at a country station in June 1914. Nothing happens; a blackbird sings. Thomas was killed at Arras in April 1917, the year the poem was printed.

Source: Edward Thomas, Poems (London: Selwyn & Blount, 1917), published under the name Edward Eastaway. Text: Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the US.

Public domain in the United States.