Adlestrop
Posted: June 14th, 2022, 10:07 pm
Finally the summer has arrived in Lancashire, and it's been a beautiful day. On my travels this afternoon I noticed a steam train puffing its way along, and the combination of a steam train and a warm, sunny afternoon reminded me of one of my favourite poems, `Adlestrop', by Edward Thomas, written almost exactly 108 years ago, on 24 June 1914:
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.
He was 36 when he wrote it, and the following year he enlisted for war service, He served in France, where he was shot dead in 1917.
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.
He was 36 when he wrote it, and the following year he enlisted for war service, He served in France, where he was shot dead in 1917.