Poetry Codex

Modern

Edward Thomas

1878–1917

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) was an English-Welsh writer who made his living as a critic, biographer and country writer before turning to poetry in 1914 at the urging of his friend Robert Frost. He wrote nearly all of his poems in the last two and a half years of his life.

He enlisted in 1915 and was killed at Arras on 9 April 1917. His first collection, Poems, appeared in October 1917 under the pseudonym Edward Eastaway, followed by Last Poems in 1918. Quiet and exact, his poems are among the most admired English poems of the war years, although few of them mention the war directly.

Poems (136)

  1. The Sign-Post
  2. Tears
  3. The Owl
  4. Swedes
  5. As the Team's Head-Brass
  6. Thaw
  7. Like the Touch of Rain
  8. The Path
  9. It Rains
  10. Bright Clouds
  11. Adlestrop
  12. The Green Roads
  13. Gone, Gone Again
  14. October
  15. Liberty
  16. The Gallows
  17. Birds' Nests
  18. Rain
  19. Lights Out
  20. Words
  21. The Glory
  22. Fifty Faggots
  23. Melancholy
  24. I never saw that Land before
  25. Old Man
  26. The Thrush
  27. Under the Woods
  28. The Cuckoo
  29. The Unknown Bird
  30. The Lofty Sky
  31. After Rain
  32. The Barn
  33. Aspens
  34. Snow
  35. House and Man
  36. Out in the Dark
  37. A Private
  38. The Brook
  39. Beauty
  40. The Mountain Chapel
  41. If I Should Ever by Chance
  42. Tall Nettles
  43. Cock-crow
  44. The Trumpet
  45. Two Pewits
  46. The Manor Farm
  47. Will You Come?
  48. Interval
  49. The Combe
  50. What Shall I Give?
  51. If I Were to Own
  52. And You, Helen
  53. When First
  54. Head and Bottle
  55. After You Speak
  56. Sowing
  57. When We Two Walked
  58. In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
  59. Women He Liked
  60. Early One Morning
  61. The Cherry Trees
  62. The Huxter
  63. A Gentleman
  64. The Bridge
  65. Lob
  66. The Clouds That Are So Light
  67. Some Eyes Condemn
  68. May 23
  69. The Mill-Pond
  70. It Was Upon
  71. Haymaking
  72. How at Once
  73. The Sun Used to Shine
  74. The Long Small Room
  75. November
  76. The Sheiling
  77. Home
  78. There's Nothing Like the Sun
  79. When He Should Laugh
  80. An Old Song
  81. The Penny Whistle
  82. Up in the Wind
  83. The Dark Forest
  84. Celandine
  85. The Ash Grove
  86. I Built Myself a House of Glass
  87. February Afternoon
  88. Digging
  89. Two Houses
  90. The Mill-Water
  91. A Dream
  92. Sedge-Warblers
  93. What Will They Do?
  94. To-Night
  95. A Cat
  96. The Unknown
  97. Song
  98. She Dotes
  99. For These
  100. March the Third
  101. The New House
  102. March
  103. Over the Hills
  104. Home
  105. The Hollow Wood
  106. Wind and Mist
  107. Digging
  108. But These Things Also
  109. April
  110. The Barn and the Down
  111. The Child on the Cliffs
  112. Good-Night
  113. The Wasp Trap
  114. July
  115. A Tale
  116. Parting
  117. Lovers
  118. That Girl's Clear Eyes
  119. The Child in the Orchard
  120. The Source
  121. First Known When Lost
  122. The Word
  123. These Things That Poets Said
  124. Home
  125. An Old Song
  126. There Was a Time
  127. Ambition
  128. No One Cares Less Than I
  129. Roads
  130. This Is No Case of Petty Right or Wrong
  131. The Chalk-Pit
  132. Health
  133. The New Year
  134. The Other
  135. The Gypsy
  136. Man and Dog

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