The Sign-Post

By Edward Thomas 1878–1917 Edward Thomas

The dim sea glints chill. The white sun is shy,

And the skeleton weeds and the never-dry,

Rough, long grasses keep white with frost

At the hilltop by the finger-post;

The smoke of the traveller’s-joy is puffed

Over hawthorn berry and hazel tuft.

I read the sign. Which way shall I go?

A voice says: You would not have doubted so

At twenty. Another voice gentle with scorn

Says: At twenty you wished you had never been born.

One hazel lost a leaf of gold

From a tuft at the tip, when the first voice told

The other he wished to know what ’twould be

To be sixty by this same post. “You shall see,”

He laughed—and I had to join his laughter—

“You shall see; but either before or after,

Whatever happens, it must befall,

A mouthful of earth to remedy all

Regrets and wishes shall freely be given;

And if there be a flaw in that heaven

’Twill be freedom to wish, and your wish may be

To be here or anywhere talking to me,

No matter what the weather, on earth,

At any age between death and birth,

To see what day or night can be,

The sun and the frost, the land and the sea,

Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring,—

With a poor man of any sort, down to a king,

Standing upright out in the air

Wondering where he shall journey, O where?”

Source: Poems (1917)

Biography

Despite affinities with the Georgian movement of the early twentieth century, Edward Thomas's verse consistently defies classification. Like the work of his Georgian contemporaries, his verse displays a profound love of natural beauty and, at times, an archaic use of diction. However, Thomas's personalized voice and intensity of vision give his poetry an artistic force which the Georgians never approached.

Thomas was born of . . .

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