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    Edwardian and Georgian Poetry

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    Mayank Jha
    This poem by Edward Thomas describes aspen trees that continually talk to each other in their leaves above a smithy, inn and shop at a crossroads. No matter the weather or time of day, the whispering of the aspens' leaves is not drowned out by the sounds from the buildings. Their whispering seems to turn the empty crossroads into a ghostly room, as if calling the ghosts of the abandoned buildings. The poem suggests the aspens will continue shaking their leaves and people may hear but need not listen, just as they need not listen to the poet's rhymes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Edwardian and Georgian Poetry

    Uploaded by

    Mayank Jha
    91 views7 pages
    This poem by Edward Thomas describes aspen trees that continually talk to each other in their leaves above a smithy, inn and shop at a crossroads. No matter the weather or time of day, the whispering of the aspens' leaves is not drowned out by the sounds from the buildings. Their whispering seems to turn the empty crossroads into a ghostly room, as if calling the ghosts of the abandoned buildings. The poem suggests the aspens will continue shaking their leaves and people may hear but need not listen, just as they need not listen to the poet's rhymes.

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    This poem by Edward Thomas describes aspen trees that continually talk to each other in their leaves above a smithy, inn and shop at a crossroads. No matter the weather or time of day, the whispering of the aspens' leaves is not drowned out by the sounds from the buildings. Their whispering seems to turn the empty crossroads into a ghostly room, as if calling the ghosts of the abandoned buildings. The poem suggests the aspens will continue shaking their leaves and people may hear but need not listen, just as they need not listen to the poet's rhymes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    91 views7 pages

    Edwardian and Georgian Poetry

    Uploaded by

    Mayank Jha
    This poem by Edward Thomas describes aspen trees that continually talk to each other in their leaves above a smithy, inn and shop at a crossroads. No matter the weather or time of day, the whispering of the aspens' leaves is not drowned out by the sounds from the buildings. Their whispering seems to turn the empty crossroads into a ghostly room, as if calling the ghosts of the abandoned buildings. The poem suggests the aspens will continue shaking their leaves and people may hear but need not listen, just as they need not listen to the poet's rhymes.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 7

    Edwardian and Georgian Poetry

    D.H. Lawrence

    Piano

    Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;


    Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
    A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
    And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

    In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song


    Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
    To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
    And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

    So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour


    With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
    Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
    Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

    1918

    William Henry Davies (W.H. Davies)


    The Sleepers

    As I walked down the waterside


    This silent morning, wet and dark;
    Before the cocks in farmyards crowed,
    Before the dogs began to bark;
    Before the hour of five was struck
    By old Westminster's mighty clock:

    As I walked down the waterside


    This morning, in the cold damp air,
    I saw a hundred women and men
    Huddled in rags and sleeping there:
    These people have no work, thought I,
    And long before their time they die.

    That moment, on the waterside,


    A lighted car came at a bound;
    I looked inside, and saw a score
    Of pale and weary men that frowned;
    Each man sat in a huddled heap,
    Carried to work while fast asleep.

    Ten cars rushed down the waterside


    Like lighted coffins in the dark;
    With twenty dead men in each car,
    That must be brought alive by work:
    These people work too hard, thought I,
    And long before their time they die.

    Leisure

    What is this life if, full of care,


    We have no time to stand and stare.

    No time to stand beneath the boughs


    And stare as long as sheep or cows.

    No time to see, when woods we pass,


    Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

    No time to see, in broad day light,


    Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

    No time to turn at beauty's glance,


    And watch her feet, how they can dance.

    No time to wait till her mouth can


    Enrich that smile her eyes began.

    A poor life this if, full of care,


    We have no time to stand and stare.
       
    from Songs of Joy and Others (1911)

    Thomas Hardy

    The Voice

    Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,


    Saying that now you are not as you were
    When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
    But as at first, when our day was fair.

    Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,


    Standing as when I drew near to the town
    Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
    Even to the original air-blue gown!

    Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness


    Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
    You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
    Heard no more again far or near?

    Thus I; faltering forward,


    Leaves around me falling,
    Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
    And the woman calling.

    The Oxen

    Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.


    “Now they are all on their knees,”
    An elder said as we sat in a flock
    By the embers in hearthside ease.

    We pictured the meek mild creatures where


    They dwelt in their strawy pen,
    Nor did it occur to one of us there
    To doubt they were kneeling then.

    So fair a fancy few would weave


    In these years! Yet, I feel,
    If someone said on Christmas Eve,
    “Come; see the oxen kneel,

    “In the lonely barton by yonder coomb


    Our childhood used to know,”
    I should go with him in the gloom,
    Hoping it might be so.

    The Darkling Thrush

    I leant upon a coppice gate


    When Frost was spectre-grey,
    And Winter's dregs made desolate
    The weakening eye of day.
    The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
    Like strings of broken lyres,
    And all mankind that haunted nigh
    Had sought their household fires.

    The land's sharp features seemed to be


    The Century's corpse outleant,
    His crypt the cloudy canopy,
    The wind his death-lament.
    The ancient pulse of germ and birth
    Was shrunken hard and dry,
    And every spirit upon earth
    Seemed fervourless as I.

    At once a voice arose among


    The bleak twigs overhead
    In a full-hearted evensong
    Of joy illimited;
    An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
    In blast-beruffled plume,
    Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

    So little cause for carolings


    Of such ecstatic sound
    Was written on terrestrial things
    Afar or nigh around,
    That I could think there trembled through
    His happy good-night air
    Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
    And I was unaware.

    Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)

    The Tailor

    Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er

    The tailor's old stone-lintelled door.

    There sits he, stitching, half asleep,

    Beside his smoky tallow dip.

    “Click, click,” his needle hastes, and shrill

    Cries back the cricket beneath the sill.

    Sometimes he stays, and over his thread

    Leans sidelong his old tousled head;

    Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye

    When some strange footfall echoes by;

    Till clearer gleams his candle's spark

    Into the dusty summer dark.

    Then from his crosslegs he gets down,


    To find how dark the evening is grown;

    And hunched-up in his door he will hear

    The cricket whistling crisp and clear;

    And so beneath the starry grey

    He will mutter half a seam away.

    Nod

    Softly along the road of evening,


    In a twilight dim with rose,
    Wrinkled with age, and drenched with dew
    Old Nod, the shepherd, goes.

    His drowsy flock streams on before him,


    Their fleeces charged with gold,
    To where the sun's last beam leans low
    On Nod the shepherd's fold.

    The hedge is quick and green with briar,


    From their sand the conies creep;
    And all the birds that fly in heaven
    Flock singing home to sleep.

    His lambs outnumber a noon's roses,


    Yet, when night's shadows fall,
    His blind old sheep-dog, Slumber-soon,
    Misses not one of all.

    His are the quiet steeps of dreamland,


    The waters of no-more-pain,
    His ram's bell rings 'neath an arch of stars,
    'Rest, rest, and rest again.'

    The Ghost

    'Who knocks? ' 'I, who was beautiful


    Beyond all dreams to restore,
    I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
    And knock on the door.'

    'Who speaks? ' 'I -- once was my speech


    Sweet as the bird's on the air,
    When echo lurks by the waters to heed;
    'Tis I speak thee fair.'
    'Dark is the hour!' 'Aye, and cold.'
    'Lone is my house.' 'Ah, but mine? '
    'Sight, touch, lips, eyes gleamed in vain.'
    'Long dead these to thine.'

    Silence. Still faint on the porch


    Brake the flames of the stars.
    In gloom groped a hope-wearied hand
    Over keys, bolts, and bars.

    A face peered. All the grey night


    In chaos of vacancy shone;
    Nought but vast sorrow was there --
    The sweet cheat gone

    Edward Thomas

    Aspens

    All day and night, save winter, every weather,


    Above the inn, the smithy, and the shop,
    The aspens at the cross-roads talk together
    Of rain, until their last leaves fall from the top.

    Out of the blacksmith's cavern comes the ringing


    Of hammer, shoe, and anvil; out of the inn
    The clink, the hum, the roar, the random singing—
    The sounds that for these fifty years have been.

    The whisper of the aspens is not drowned,


    And over lightless pane and footless road,
    Empty as sky, with every other sound
    Not ceasing, calls their ghosts from their abode,

    A silent smithy, a silent inn, nor fails


    In the bare moonlight or the thick-furred gloom,
    In tempest or the night of nightingales,
    To turn the cross-roads to a ghostly room.

    And it would be the same were no house near.


    Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
    Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear
    But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.

    Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves


    We cannot other than an aspen be
    That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
    Or so men think who like a different tree.
    Rain
    Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
    On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
    Remembering again that I shall die
    And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
    For washing me cleaner than I have been
    Since I was born into solitude.
    Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
    But here I pray that none whom once I loved
    Is dying tonight or lying still awake
    Solitary, listening to the rain,
    Either in pain or thus in sympathy
    Helpless among the living and the dead,
    Like a cold water among broken reeds,
    Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
    Like me who have no love which this wild rain
    Has not dissolved except the love of death,
    If love it be towards what is perfect and
    Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

    The Cherry Trees

    The cherry trees bend over and are shedding


    On the old road where all that passed are dead,
    Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
    This early May morn when there is none to wed.

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