Quotes from Edward Thomas

A merely great intellect can produce prose, but not poetry, not one line.

I built myself a house of glass:It took me years to make it:And I was proud. But now, alas!Would God someone would break it.

An acre of land between the shore and the hills... A garden I need never go beyond, Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun...

Out of the wood of thoughts that grows by night To be cut down by the sharp axe of light,—

It was a perfect day For sowing.... Nothing undone Remained; the early seeds All safely sown. And now, hark at the rain, Windless and light, Half a kiss, half a tear, Saying good-night.

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...

The Winter's cheek flushed as if he had drained Spring, Summer, and Autumn at a draught...

November's days are thirty: November's earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths.... Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.

Let me sometimes dance With you, Or climb Or stand perchance In ecstasy, Fixed and free In a rhyme, As poets do.

Today I think Only with scents,—scents dead leaves yield, And bracken, and wild carrot's seed, And the square mustard field... It is enough To smell, to crumble the dark earth...

How weak and little is the light,All the universe of sight,Love and delight,Before the might,If you love it not, of night.

[A]nd now I might As happy be as earth is beautiful...

The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.

How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood This Eastertide call into mind the men, Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should Have gathered them and will do never again.

and I rose up, and knew that I was tired, and continued my journey

You English words? I know you: You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and corn, Or an old cloak: Sweet as our birds To the ear, As the burnet rose In the heat Of Midsummer

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds' The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904

If he [Pound] is not careful he will take to meaning what he says instead of saying what he means.

You cannot make chicken salad out of Chicken shit.

I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors Many a frozen night, and merrily Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores: "At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he, "I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town, Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.

Tall Nettles Tall nettles cover up, as they have done These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough Long worn out, and the roller made of stone : Only the elm butt tops the nettles now. This corner of the farmyard I like most: As well as any bloom upon a flower I like the dust on the nettles, never lost Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.