Adlestrop [EDWARD THOMAS poem set to music]
Channel: tobydarling
Date: 2014-05-23

This poem was written in 1914, 3 years before Edward Thomas was killed in the First World War. It's a great poem, in my view.

The video was shot in the Hampshire countryside in high summer.

Adlestrop
BY EDWARD THOMAS
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.