House and Man

By Edward Thomas 1878–1917 Edward Thomas

One hour: as dim he and his house now look

As a reflection in a rippling brook,

While I remember him; but first, his house.

Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs

That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles

Part of the squirrels’ track. In all those miles

Of forest silence and forest murmur, only

One house—“Lonely!” he said, “I wish it were lonely”—

Which the trees looked upon from every side,

And that was his.

He waved good-bye to hide

A sigh that he converted to a laugh.

He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half

Ghost-like, half like a beggar’s rag, clean wrung

And useless on the brier where it has hung

Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.

But why I call back man and house again

Is that now on a beech-tree’s tip I see

As then I saw—I at the gate, and he

In the house darkness,—a magpie veering about,

A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.

Source: Last Poems (1918)

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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