Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas: Lights Out

Edward Thomas was born to Welsh parents in London, and educated at St Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford. His father expected Edward to enter the Civil Service, but he was determined to make a living as a writer. Most of his time was taken up by journalism and books commissioned by various publishers , who paid him by the number of words he wrote. Much of it was unrewarding work, and Thomas became increasingly prone to depression and ill-health.

His spirits were lifted in 1913 by a meeting with the American poet Robert Frost, who encouraged him to write poetry. Thomas published several poems in journals under the pseudonym Edward Eastaway, and by 1915 when he enlisted to fight in the Great War, he had already made considerable development as a poet. He arrived in France in 1917 and was killed in action at Arras soon afterwards.

Unlike other famous 'war poets' such as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas did not concentrate directly on the experience of war in his poetry. The love of the English countryside which informs much of his work in prose is expressed with great lyrical beauty and subtlety in poems such as 'Celandine', 'Melancholy' and 'Adlestrop'. His close friend Walter de la Mare wrote a foreword for the posthumous Collected Poems.

Source: http://www.poemhunter.com/edward-thomas/biography/

 

Lights Out

I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

Many a road and track
That, since the dawn's first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.

Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends;
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.

There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter, and leave, alone,
I know not how.

The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.

Edward Thomas

Unlike many of the British war poets, Thomas was nearly 40 years of age when he enlisted in 1915. A struggling writer, Thomas supported his family by writing book reviews and travel articles. In 1914, he became close friends with the newly arrived American writer to England, Robert Frost. It was Frost that encouraged Thomas to begin writing poetry. It was a form in which he excelled though initially he didn’t believe strongly in his abilities and wrote under the pseudonym, Edward Eastway. 

Thomas felt an intense social pressure to join the military. He received a commission in 1916, and was killed by a shell blast at Arras in 1917. Thomas’ recognition as a poet has continued to grow through the decades. While he is recognized as one of the Britain’s war poets, he is also seen as one of the country’s best writers in portraying the beauty of nature in the English countryside. This same feeling of the love of nature extends into many of Thomas’ war poems.
 
“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.
  
 “In Memoriam”

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.
 
Reflective Questions: “The Cherry Trees” and “In Memoriam” 
  1. How is it that the fate of the leaves of the cherry tree is similar to those of soldiers? How are they different? Or, should be different?
  2. What is the feel expressed in the poem “The Cherry Trees” for the future?
  3. “In Memoriam” what is the significance of the flowers?
  4. What emotion is sparked by Thomas’ poem “In Memoriam?”

Further Research on British Poets

Memoirs


Several years following the end of the First World War memoirs began to be published. Most were penned by writers who had fought in the war, others written by journalists and nurses. Three of the best memoirs were written by Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Excerpts are available on line and hard copies can be obtained through library services.
 
Blunden, Edmund. Undertones of War (London: R. Cobden-Sanderson, 1928).
 
Graves, Robert. Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography (London: J. Cape, 1929). New edition published by Berghahn Books, 1995 includes a biographical essay and annotations.
 
Sassoon, Siegfried.  Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1930).
 

The Importance of Relationships



As many of the poems in this module show, war can be a lonely and most predictably a life changing experience. Several writers found encouragement from one another. For example, the friendship of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, while the two were patients at Craiglockhart, was important to the literary development of the two. Both wrote for the hospital’s literary journal, The Hydra. Issues of the journal can be obtained through the web site: www.lib.byu.edu/~english/WWI/index.html.
 
Stephen MacDonald’s play Not about Heroes (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1983) depicts the friendship between the two men.   A more recent book, Regeneration by Pat Barker (New York: Plume, 1993) centers around the doctor-patient relationship between Siegfried Sassoon and his psychologist, W.H.R. Rivers.
 
Helen Thomas wrote a two-volume autobiography about her life with her husband, poet Edward Thomas. Thomas was killed in 1917 at the Battle of Arras. As it Was (London: W. Heinemann, 1926) and World Without End (London: Heinemann, 1931) addresses her husband’s struggle to become a poet.
 

The Death of a Son


One of England’s most famous writers, Rudyard Kipling, was convinced that the First World War would be short-lived. His belief was so strong that he urged his teenage son, John, to join the military. John was wounded in 1915 and two years later after being reported missing, was declared dead. In honor of his son Kipling wrote a history of The Irish Guards in the Great War (London: Macmillan and Company, Limited, 1923) and a short story, “The Gardner,” a moving tale about those who are left to mourn the dead.  Another work, My Boy Jack by David Haig (London: Nick Hern Books, 1997) tells the story of John Kipling.