Per Terry, when you read this, post a poem.
Adlestrop
Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop – only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
It’s by Edward Thomas (1878-1917). I learned it by heart when I was about 9. A couple of years later I actually visited Adlestrop Station (long since closed) while on holiday near Stratford-on-Avon. It was a hot summer’s day, much as Thomas described in his notebook on June 23, 1914.
For years I remembered the poem almost perfectly (though I sometimes stumbled in the third verse). It was not until recently, when I was researching my blog entry on First World War music and poetry, that I discovered that Edwards’ vision of a countryside full of life yet devoid of people was a comment on how the War, and the call-up, had affected rural England.
To me this is still a wonderful picture of the beauty of England as I remember it, but there is now a shadow across the sun, and the men who should be gathering the “haycocks dry” are far away….