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.
