Adlestrop Poem by Edward Thomas - Poem Hunter Adlestrop Poem by Edward Thomas - Poem Hunter Adlestrop - Poem by Edward Thomas Autoplay next video 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. Jenny B (6/16/2016 2:43:00 PM) I am sitting in Adlestrop on an afternoon of heat in June - 2016,102 years after the poem was written.

(102 years less 8 days.) There is a beautiful bright blue sky with still white cloudlets, lonely and fair, and remarkably, a blackbird has just started singing only yards away, from the slate roof of a cottage, with a chorus of birds in the distance behind him. Of the station, not even a bare platform is visible, just the name, the railway sign, ADLESTROP, now set rather nicely with an old bench into an enclosed wooden bus shelter. The railway line was a casualty of the cuts inflicted by the infamous Dr Beeching in 1966. The creamy stone cottages of the village, its history known back to around 750AD, are glowing in the afternoon sun. The cottage gardens are full of traditional flowers, and climbing roses twine around doorways. In the hedgerows there are willow-herb, grass and meadowsweet, though it's far too early for haycocks (that always struck me as incongruous for June) . I miss the hiss of steam. But elsewhere, little has changed. Anyone who's ever been here, even for an unwonted minute, could easily dream of it for ever after.

(Report) Reply Bryan Timmins (10/8/2015 3:25:00 PM) I knew this poem from school and later as a serving officer in the first gulf war it hit me with all its embedded meaning, a home far away, untouchable peace and the pain of it not being mine anymore. When and where Thomas wrote this almost narcotic dream of innocence says to me it is unsentimental and more a war poem than i first understood it to be. (Report) Reply Madathil Rajendran Nair (3/29/2015 12:25:00 PM) From the emptiness of Adlestrop to the song of the solitary blackbird and then to the avian cacophony of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire - a beautiful poem like the mist in that afternoon. (Report) Reply Jean-paul Audouy (1/23/2013 11:39:00 AM) Did just the same ad Marlene. I wanted absolutely to read the whole poem after its evoked in Sweet Tooth p.178.

I've know some of the other War Poets and love everything by Wilfred Owen. Thanks to Ian McEwan, I'll discover Edward Thomas. (Report) Reply Marlene Dodes-callahan (12/17/2012 9:15:00 PM) I regret the many years I did not know this poet and thanks to Ian McEwan's mention of him and this poem in particular, in his latest novel Sweet Tooth, I can add him to my favourites. (Report) Reply Tom Bulfin (3/2/2009 6:09:00 AM) A delightful poem which exudes peace and quiet even while the poet sits in the express train ready to be whisked off t God-knows -where.I have studied this poem with many classes down through the years and have never failed to enjoy it (not so sure about the classes!) (Report) Reply Fay Slimm (11/29/2008 9:00:00 AM) With this re-reading of a verse learnt so many years ago, I was transported back to the same classroom and enthusiastic teacher who first introduced me to Edward Thomas - so yes, thanks to Mr.

T. I do remember Adlestrop and still delight in this brilliant unforced picture of early century countryside..... (Report) Reply Eric Jump (2/25/2006 11:33:00 PM) This is such a fresh, alive reality of the rhythms and proportions of nature providing an unexpected respite for all of us on the hissing express; a totally unforced radiance of words. We need Edward Thomas more than ever for our sesquiquattuordecimcentennial. What a thrill to discover a great poet!

(Report) Reply Remembrance Day poems: 10 poems for the fallen What to Read Remembrance Day poems: 10 poems for the fallen Remembrance Day poems: poppies growing where dead soldiers lay inspired John McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields Credit: Alamy 11 November 2016 • 11:30am For the Fallen - Laurence Binyon Probably the most famous and widely read war poem in English and also known, in extract form, as the Ode of Remembrance, For the Fallen was first published in The Times on September 21 1914, just a few weeks after the First World War began on July 28 that year. Binyon was too old to enlist as a soldier in the Great War, but volunteered in hospitals helping wounded French soldiers, and wrote For the Fallen in Cornwall shortly after the Battle of the Marne. They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them.

Read full poem The Soldier - Rupert Brooke During the First World War, Brooke joined the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and died of an infection in 1915 en route to Gallipoli. The most famous lines from his poem The Soldier are often read in remembrance of those who die far from home fighting for their country, suggesting that soldiers take a part of their home nation with them to the grave. If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. Read full poem Drummer Hodge - Thomas Hardy Hardy's Drummer Hodge uses a similar device to Brooke's The Soldier. It was written before Brooke's more famous lines, however, and was composed by Hardy in 1899 in response to the Anglo-Boer War. It focuses on the very young British drummers - usually boys in their early teens - who accompanied soldiers into battle overseas and faced death alongside them.

Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow to some Southern tree, And strange-eyed constellations reign Read full poem In Flanders Fields - John McRae Written in 1915 from the perspective of dead soldiers lying in their graves, John McRae's poem urges the reader to avenge slaughtered men's deaths. Almost as soon as it was written, the poem became hugely popular and was used in motivational posters and armed forces recruitment leaflets across Britain and North America during the First World War. As the first war poem to refer to poppies as a symbol of remembrance, the poem is still read across the world on Remembrance Day. McRae was a Canadian doctor and Lieutenant Colonel in the First World War, fighting and overseeing medical care in Boulogne with the Canadian Expeditionary Force. He died of pneumonia on the battlefield in January 1918. In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Read full poem Charge of the Light Brigade - Alfred, Lord Tennyson This narrative poem about the noted battle in the Crimean war was written by Tennyson in 1854. It has become one of the defining war poems, capturing the thrill of battle as well as the futility of conflict and the brutal reality of fighting. It was widely popular at the time, and one couplet in particular has passed into the vernacular: "Theirs not to reason why,/ Theirs but to do and die". When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder’d. Honour the charge they made! Read full poem And Death Shall Have No Dominion - Dylan Thomas Written between the wars in 1933, Thomas's poem takes on a broad theme of remembrance and the eternity of the human spirit. They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.

Read full poem An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - WB Yeats Yeats's poem in the voice of an Irish airman doesn't glorify fighting - in fact, speaking as the soldier, he says, "Those that I fight I do not hate,/ Those that I guard I do not love". Instead it's a measured meditation on being in the firing line during war, and being drawn to "a tumult in the clouds". The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. Read full poem Adlestrop - Edward Thomas Edward Thomas chose to enlist in the Artists Rifles in 1915. Though not much of his poetry deals explicitly with war, the war is often referred to obliquely. Adlestrop is a haunting portrait of the quiet calm of England, in contrast to the horrific fighting taking place abroad, as remembered by Thomas when his train made a stop in the Cotswolds just before war broke out in 1914. Thomas was killed in action at Arras on Easter Monday, April 1917. Adlestrop was published soon afterwards.

And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Read full poem MCMXIV - Philip Larkin Larkin's heartbreakingly poignant poem reflects on the patriotic optimism of the young men queueing up to enlist in 1914. The poem was written in 1964, when some critical distance from both wars had been reached. In the wake of colossal destruction, Larkin looks back with devastatingly sharp hindsight at the doomed notion that war would be akin to "an August Bank Holiday lark" for those about to fight. Never such innocence, As changed itself to past Without a word – the men Leaving the gardens tidy, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again. Hear Larkin reading MCMXIV Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen Owen's poem Dulce et Decorum Est, written during the First World War, was published posthumously in 1920. It brings vividly to life the desperate human misery of warfare, condemning and raging against the "lie" that war is noble.

Owen served on the front line in the Manchester Regiment, suffering severe shell shock, and was killed in action on November 4 1918. His mother was informed of his death on Armistice Day, seven days later. If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori. Poems of Philip Edward Thomas - The British Library Poems of Philip Edward Thomas Description English Although Edward Thomas wrote no poetry during his time in France during the First World War, war heavily pervaded his thoughts and it has a strong presence in his work. The First World War helped to focus Thomas as a poet and his work centres on the English idyll that is under threat. His poem Adlestrop is a good example of this.

Inspired by a pause in a train journey Thomas took in 1914, the poem shows him looking at the English countryside in a new light and realising the depth of beauty in seemingly inconsequential places. After serious consideration Thomas joined the Artists’ Rifles in 1915, at the age of 37. He was killed in the first hour of the Battle of Arras in 1917. Transcript war – 100 Great Poetry Lessons John Howes Leave a comment Jim Radord, D-day veteran and composer. The Shores of Normandy is an incredibly moving song written by Jim Radford in memory of the crew mates he lost on D-Day, June 6th, 1944. It can stand alone as a powerful poem, but is even more impressive as a song. This is how the poem begins: In the cold grey light of the sixth of June, in the year of forty-four, The Empire Larch sailed out from Poole to join with thousands more. The largest fleet the world had seen, we sailed in close array, And we set our course for Normandy at the dawning of the day.

There was not one man in all our crew but knew what lay in store, For we had waited for that day through five long years of war. We knew that many would not return, yet all our hearts were true, For we were bound for Normandy, where we had a job to do. The poem goes on to tell of the experiences of a galley-boy on board the Empire Larch, a deep sea tug, as it crossed the channel and landed at Normandy. As Radford writes: I little thought when I left home of the dreadful sights I’d see, But I came to manhood on the day that I first saw Normandy. This is a poem in the style of story-telling ballads. It is straight-forward, packed with action and emotion and will appeal to people of all ages. In the video below, Jim Radford performs his composition at the Service of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall in November 2014. Suggested activities 1. Begin with the words. Give the poem to the children. Do not give them the context, but ask them to highlight key words or phrases that give clues as to what this poem is all about. 2. Discuss what happened at Normandy.

Why did the people die? What were they doing there? What did they achieve? What must it have been like to have been aboard the Empire Larch that day in June, 1944? 3. Prepare a class reading of the poem. Individual groups could work on particular verses. 4. Add artwork to your performance. Could children draw the boat and the servicemen on board? 5. What do those children who might play video games about war think about it in reality? Has it changed the way they feel about warfare and being a soldier? 6. Show the children the recording of Jim Radford performing the song. Do they think it brings the song to life? What questions would they like to put to Jim Radford? He can be contacted here . I would like to suggest two contrasting poems about places – both are wonderful poems and conjure up the sense of place vividly. Adlestrop by Edward Thomas The first is called Adlestrop by Edward Thomas (1878-1917). Thomas is seen as a nature poet and his short life was ended when he died in the First World War. Adlestrop is a place in Gloucestershire where his train stopped one day.

It was one of those occasions when the train stops at a station unexpectedly, and no one gets off or gets on. He captures the moment beautifully in four simple stanzas. Here is how it begins: Yes, I remember Adlestrop — The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. You can read the full text of the poem here. There is a reading of the poem by legendary film actor Richard Burton here: This is a longer film with pictures of the station, which match some of the phrases in the poem. Midsummer, Tobago by Derek Walcott Midsummer, Tobago is by Caribbean poet Derek Walcott (born 1930), a winner of the Nobel prize for literature. It evokes a moment in midsummer. You can feel the heat, see the river on this stifling August day. Walcott takes this opportunity to think about the past and the memories he treasures. This is how the poem begins. Broad sun-stoned beaches. from the summer-sleeping house drowsing through August. The full text of this short poem is here. There is a rather unusual musical treatment of this poem here: Suggested activities 1.

Read one of the poems to the class. Get them to close their eyes. Divide the five senses out to groups. When they have heard the poem, what do they see, hear, touch, taste and smell? Now do the same with the second poem – how is this different? 2. Talk about the feelings of the two poets. They have not just described a place they have visited. They have managed to suggest what it means to them. How do the poets feel about these places? Don’t accept ‘happy’ or ‘sad’. Get a thesaurus out and ask the children to brainstorm the feelings of the poets. 3. Once the children are familiar with both poems, ask them to think of a place they have visited. They could first produce a shower of words associated with that place. Then ask them to list feelings they have about that place. If it is a fond memory, why? 4. Ask children then to write in the style of one of the poems (they may find the Walcott free verse easier). Make sure every word counts. Once they have put some ideas down, get them to swap their poems and see if any words can be removed. 5. Ask them to perform their poems to partners and to groups.

Work on a second draft. Then perform them to the class. John Howes Leave a comment In June 1989, hundreds of innocent civilians were massacred in Beijing in an uprising by students campaigning for democracy. This memorable poem, Tiananmen by James Fenton (born 1949) is a powerful, but accessible, reflection on the incident. I used this poem with a Year 5 class and, even though they were unaware of the incident, they brought many intelligent thoughts to the discussion, especially when confronted by the most famous image of this event in history. Tiananmen And you can’t tell Where the dead have been And you can’t tell What happened then And you can’t speak Of Tiananmen. Here is the full text of the poem. Below is a video showing the most striking image of the events in the square – a young man stands in front of a tank and will not let it pass. You could show this video, with or without the soundtrack which contains a poem by Rod Kerr. Possible activities with this poem I think I began with the text of this poem and just put it out there to the class.

I asked them to read it in pairs, and note down a couple of questions on whiteboards which they would like to ask about the poem. I didn’t give them any clues about it and I didn’t even tell them what Tiananmen was or why it was important. These are some of the possible questions: Why are there dead people? Where is Tiananmen? What happened there? Why are you not allowed to think? Why are you not allowed to write things down? Who are the ‘cruel men’? Why are they ‘ready to kill’? It would be good at this stage, to move towards some kind of class or group performance of the poem. By now, children should have gathered what the appropriate mood is for the poem. The vocabulary is very simple and straightforward, though the meaning is deep. At this stage, you may wish to reveal the picture (above, or similar) of the student facing up the tank. Alternatively, you could show the whole incident in the Youtube clip. I found that children were fascinated by this and suddenly the meaning of the poem fell into place. Read the poem again. And look again at the questions posed at the beginning.

Then, broaden out the discussion with questions such as: What is democracy? Why do people feel it is important to cast a vote for how their country is run? Will you vote when you grow up? Do you think children should have a vote? For which things do we vote in school (eg school councils, class captains)? Why do we do this? How does it make you feel when you vote? Can you think of anywhere in the world where people cannot vote? How does this make them feel? John Howes Leave a comment When it is raining outside, don’t close the blinds in your classroom. I know it can be a terrible distraction if children are looking out of the window at the weather, but why not turn it into a creative moment? I want to suggest a couple of poems you could use. These could lead to discussion, vocabulary work, and ultimately to children trying to find their own poetic voices. If you have an outdoor classroom, this would be a great time to use it. Get the coats on, and get outside. Find somewhere dry-ish and listen to these poems. First up is April Rain Song by Langston Hughes (1902-1967). Hughes was an American poet and activist.

Among his work is a fascinating book of poetry about jazz music. The poem can be found in One Hundred Years of Poetry for Children (Oxford, 2007), edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark. This is a short, but beautiful, poem about the rain. You might want to ask children to go outside and think of as many words to describe the rain first. Make a class list. How many are positive about the rain, and how many negative? Then read them this poem, very slowly. It begins: Let the rain kiss you Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops Let the rain sing you a lullaby Questions to ask about this poem: How does the poet feel about the rain? Which words does he use to describe it? Who is the poet speaking to when he uses the word ‘you’? From which country does the poet come? How do we know this from the poem? How do you feel about the rain? How can it be a beautiful thing? Can you think of an occasion when you, too, have loved the rain?

There is a glorious video of the poem here: And another one here from the New York Botanical Gardens: Another poem about the rain The second poem to consider (on the same page of the book mentioned above) is There will come soft rains by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933). She was an American poet, from Missouri, and had a rather tragic life . Here is the beginning of it: There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; And frogs in the pools, singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white, The poem was published in 1920, not long after the end of the First World War. Here is the full text. Here is a video version of the poem: This poem could fit into your project about the First World War, but it could also be considered alongside other weather poems, and leading into a deeper meaning. Possible activities in the classroom Just give this poem to children, perhaps in Years 5 or 6, and challenge them to explain what it is about. Don’t give them any introduction about it or any images to tease them. Then ask: When do you think this poem was written?

Was it written by a man or a woman? Why? Which war are they writing about? How does nature respond to this war? What point is the poet trying to make about war? There are plenty more poems about the rain on the Poem Hunter website . I would be interested to know if you have used any, and which were effective. John Howes 1 Comment There has never been a more important time to address issues of refugees, alienation and racism. With feelings running high in many countries of the world – especially the UK – thi s is an important subject to raise in classrooms. Many of our primary schools have welcomed children from other countries, some refugees, some seeking asylum. This poem, Citizen of the World by Dave Calder, will get the class thinking about how children must feel when they arrive in a new place, perhaps not of their own choosing. It begins: when you are very small maybe not quite born for some reason you may never understand they move from their own town and you grow up in a place that is never quite your home The full text of the poem can be found here , along with other poems by Dave Calder.

It is hard to find much information about Dave Calder, other than he edited The Usborne Book of Funny Poems. Possible activities Start the lesson by asking children what the word ‘home’ means to them. Make a list of class responses and some typical vocabulary. Then show them a picture, such as the one above. Here are some possible discussion questions: Who are these people? How are they feeling? Look at their faces. Why do people have to leave one country and go to another? What does the word ‘home’ mean to them? How does this compare to your idea of ‘home’ discussed earlier? Perhaps someone in your class could share a story from personal experience of moving from one place to another. Perhaps someone has had to move to another country, not of their own choosing. Then read, and experience, the poem. Ask children what they like about it, and what puzzles them about it. What does the line ‘with a smile or a fist‘ mean? More poems about refugees Other poems about refugees include We Refugees by Benjamin Zephaniah, though the reading is not by him. This video is of a poem by a 12-year-old girl called Reema who had to flee Syria after her school was bombed.

It was made by Oxfam America. If you have suggestions of other poems about refugees, I would be pleased to receive them. This is a well-known poem by Siegfried Sassoon, written shortly after the signing of the Armistice in 1918. Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on–on–and out of sight. Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away … O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. Siegfried Sassoon Here is a video of some secondary school children performing the poem. There is a suggested lesson plan on this poem on the Poetry Archive. You can listen to Sassoon reading his own poem here. Suggested activities Begin with a picture of celebrations of World War One ending, then lead into the poem itself. Or begin with the words (this is what I did). Work towards a class performance. Do not discuss the meaning yet. Get children very familiar with the text itself.

Give pairs one line of the poem and get them to learn it and rehearse it together. This should lead to a full class performance without having to refer to the text. Whisper lines. Shout lines. Exaggerate lines. Respect lines. Say lines fast. Say lines slow. Say lines on your own. Say lines as a group. Say lines as a whole class. Then think about these questions: What were they celebrating? Pick out words from the text which suggest a mood of joy and hope. Why should they suddenly sing? What is the setting for the poem? Which year is it? What has just happened? Why is song important at a time like this? Work towards a class performance which could be filmed. Ask a group to research pictures on the internet which could be used as a backdrop for the performance. Or record audio to accompany a Powerpoint or Moviemaker version of the poem. John Howes Leave a comment Is the Holocaust a subject which is appropriate for learning in primary schools? My answer would be an emphatic ‘yes’. I was fortunate to be a student teacher at a village school which tackled this very subject as part of its World War Two project with a mixed Year Five/Six class.

Our main text for the unit was The Diary of Anne Frank which fascinated the children as they could identify with this young girl. My supporting text was the wonderful book Rose Blanche by Ian McEwan which examines resistance to the Nazis from within Germany, particularly by young people. We also went on a school trip to The National Holocaust Centre and Museum at Newark in Nottinghamshire. The centre has a special programme for primary school children, called The Journey, which teaches about the Holocaust at an age-appropriate level and through the eyes of children. We were also fortunate enough to have a talk, followed by a question-and-answer session with a lady who had been on the Kinder Transport. You can watch a short video of children from various schools talking about their visit here . So what can poetry add to primary children’s experience of learning about the Holocaust? Well the International School for Holocaust Studies has a series of poems, linked with artwork, which are accessible and suitable for Key Stage Three children. I think some of them could also be studied by Year Five/ Six children. Take Shema by Primo Levi. Levi, a chemist, was deported to Auschwitz and survived the war. His novels and poems make powerful reading. You can read the full text of the poem here .

There is also an illustrated version of the poem which can be downloaded from this link. This is an extract: Consider whether this is a man, Who labors in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for a crust of bread Who dies at a yes or a no. There are teachers’ notes with the poem, so there is no point me repeating them here. As with many of my suggested poetry activities, it might be useful to begin with the image (which shows three figures – two Holocaust victims, and one from the generation which survived). You could discuss who they might be, what lives they might have had, and how they are different. I think that study of this poem does assume some knowledge already of the Holocaust, and it may be that it would fit in towards the end of a unit which has included learning about Anne Frank. Certainly the five lines shown above have enough in them to stimulate a mature debate about the rights of humankind. The debate could also be broadened to include discussion of discrimination in the world today. Here is a video from the Yad Vashem project about the poem.

Judge for yourself whether you think this is suitable for Years 5 and 6, but I think most children could cope with this content and would be interested to learn about it. There is also a collection of poems written by children whilst in the Terezin ghetto and concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Here is a link to them. Pavel Friedman’s poem The Butterfly is especially powerful. It tells of the very last butterfly seen in the ghetto: The last, the very last, So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow. Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing against a white stone … I think children could easily relate to this poem. Pavel is believed to have been 17 when he wrote it. He died in 1944 at Auschwitz and it wasn’t until after his death that the poem was discovered. The full text of the poem is on the above link. The poem could easily be used as a stimulus to artwork portraying the horror of the camps in contrast to the enduring beauty of nature. If you have used any poems about the Holocaust at primary level, I would be interested to hear about them and add them to this page.

Similarly, if you have experience of primary children writing their own poetry about the Holocaust, please send me any examples which I could add here. Note John Howes Leave a comment The Christmas Truce in 1914 is an inspiring subject which captures the imagination of young people. I once did a lesson on the Christmas Truce, looking at two songs about the incident, but treating them initially as poems. The two works were Pipes of Peace by Paul McCartney and Christmas 1914 by Mike Harding. Here are links to the songs: This is the first verse of Christmas 1914 by Mike Harding. It is a beautiful poem and a lovely melody. Christmas Eve, 1914, stars were burning, burning bright And all along the Western Front the guns were lying still and quiet. And men lay dozing in the trenches, in the cold and in the dark, And far away behind the lines, a village dog began to bark. Read the rest of the lyrics here. Christmas 1914 lyrics Pipes of Peace lyrics – not overtly about the Truce, so should be looked at second Suggested activities: 1. Show the picture (or similar) first. What is happening? Where are we?

What is the date? Who are the people? Are they friends of enemies? 2. Look at the text of Christmas 1914. Read together. Use the five questions approach to studying the text. 3. Watch the video of the song Christmas 1914. How does this make you feel? Why wasn’t there a football match in Christmas 1915? What does this say about war? 4. Watch the Paul McCartney video of Pipes of Peace. How does this compare to the Mike Harding song? How is it different? Which do you prefer, and why? Edward Thomas - Edward Thomas Poems - Poem Hunter Edward Thomas - Edward Thomas Poems - Poem Hunter Do you like this poet? Edward Thomas Poems Adlestrop Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because ... Rain Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain On this... The Cherry Trees The cherry trees bend over and are ... Like The Touch Of Rain Like the touch of rain she was On a ... Words Out of us all That make rhymes Will you ... Beauty WHAT does it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No...

The Owl DOWNHILL I came, hungry, and yet not starved, Cold,... All poems of Edward Thomas » Search in the poems of Edward Thomas: Phillip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France. Early Life Thomas was born in Lambeth, London. He was educated at Battersea Grammar School, St Paul's School and Lincoln College, Oxford. His family were mostly Welsh. Unusually, he married while still an undergraduate and determined to live his life by the pen. He then worked as a book reviewer, reviewing ... more » Click here to add this poet to your My Favorite Poets. Recommended Reads: 'Adlestrop', by Edward Thomas | The Reader Online The Reader Online Recommended Reads: 'Adlestrop', by Edward Thomas November 14, 2007 By Julie-ann Rowell .

Julie-ann is a poet whose first pamphlet collection, Convergence , was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her new collection is due to be published by Brodie Press in 2008. Edit: Julie-ann’s collection Letters North is available from July 2008. Adlestrop by Edward Thomas , first published 1917 ‘Adlestrop’ is not what may be thought of as a typical World War One poem, yet it is the one I return to most often. It was published posthumously after Thomas was killed by a shell blast on Easter Monday 1917 and describes a train journey he undertook three years previously between Oxford and Worcester. The journey appears on the surface uneventful, but Thomas conveys his beloved England in this one small moment when the train stops at a Gloucestershire village, an England that is under threat, the stop is ‘unwontedly’–uncustomary, and ‘No one left and no one came/On the bare platform. What I saw/Was Adlestrop – only the name’. Entire villages were recruited into the same regiment and sent off to war, and hence a complete population of young men could be wiped out.

The willows, willow-herb, grass, meadowsweet, and haycocks are ‘No whit less still and lonely’. Thomas was highly knowledgeable about natural history, earning a precarious living as a free-lance writer. He is associated with the Dymock Poets, a group of writers that included Robert Frost, who lived near the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire between 1911 and 1914. They represented a movement away from the traditional, more florid style of the Romantics, seeking a modern sensibility, which included gaining inspiration from their natural surroundings and everyday experiences. Robert Frost was a huge influence on Thomas, encouraging him to take up poetry. It is notable that Thomas wrote all of his poetry during World War One. In ‘Adlestrop’, as in so much of his work, he celebrates the English countryside he revered, writing about it from somewhere unspeakable. England was ‘not an idea, not even a nation but a very specific place, a place that for the poet is home’.

‘Adlestrop’ is a continuation of the pastoral tradition–with his direct, yet understated style, Thomas reconnects the reader with Wordsworth, as well as standing on the threshold of the ’new’, and preparing the ground for Heaney and Hughes. The opening is so simple and takes us straight to the heart of it–‘Yes I remember Adlestrop –‘ it is as if he is beginning a conversation with us. The poem is in part a reflection of the passage of time, the beauty of England, and what is replete in a blackbird’s song, a typical encompassing English bird–all of England is here, in the sounds of the ‘mistier’ birds too. I find Adlestrop especially poignant because Thomas had only written a part of what he would surely have contributed to the English pantheon–143 poems–before his untimely death. More has been lost since the writing of the poem, with the closure of the railway station itself, but that’s another story. Adlestrop (1917) 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. Open Yale Courses The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds, The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No; It's gunnery practice out at sea. Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be: [This is not "The Second Coming." Kind of a reply to Yeats, although Yeats has written his poem yet.] 'All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. 'That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them's a blessed thing, For if it were they'd have to scour Hell's floor for so much threatening….

'Ha, ha. [Hardy's God laughs like that. Frost would have understood it.] It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need).' [This is God, so cruel that he will not deliver the Second Coming, the Day of Judgment.] So down we lay again. 'I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,' Said one, 'than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!' And many a skeleton shook his head. 'Instead of preaching forty year,' My neighbor Parson Thirdly said, 'I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.' Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. Gunnery practice disturbs the dead, disrupts the ground. Here, war refuses to let the dead lie in peace, with the notion that not even the dead are safe from it, unaffected by it. The church windows shatter. Well, in some sense this is exactly what modernity might be seen to be doing to traditional English culture.

Hardy is full of all those quaint gothic, archaic dictions and fancies. The dead are raising their objections here to guns that will be used very shortly in the Great War. God reassures them, though, of course, what he says here is not reassuring. He says that although "red war" is getting redder, it's really as it always has been. This is not the end of the world that it appears to be. He's not about to let mankind off the hook with Judgment Day. The speaker-narrator lies back and wonders if the world will ever be saner. His neighbor says, "Well, I don't think so. I wish I had pleasured myself rather than serving that wicked God." In the last stanza then there is that extraordinary shift of perspective. The sound of the guns carries inland, into the heart of England, and as it does it carries back also in time to Camelot and to "starlit Stonehenge." What happens when that happens? What is the meaning of this – the power of the sound of the guns to echo back in time? As Hardy evokes Camelot and Stonehenge, you might read this, understand this as, what?

As dignifying and legitimating the present firing, the present conflict? Or in some sense does it do just the opposite? Does it suggest that England's history and its heritage and its honor are in jeopardy? Does it in some sense demythologize the past, demystify it, make us see Camelot and Stonehenge as part of a barbaric history such as is about to unfold in 1914? Chapter 3. Thomas Hardy Poem: "In the Time of 'the Breaking of Nations' " [00:23:44] There are a couple of other Hardy poems in your anthology, memorable and powerful, that are war poems, including on page 59, "In The Time of 'the Breaking of Nations,'" and then on the next page, "I Looked Up From My Writing." Interesting to look at these together. In this first poem Hardy affirms the endurance of rural life and its cycles: Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. II Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass; Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.

III Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by: War's annals will fade into night Ere their story die. Rural life, including rituals of love and courtship, here are represented as poetry's truest subject and as a kind of enduring source of social life and meaning. You could compare this poem to the poem placed last in Yeats's last poems called "Politics" that might seem to say something similar. In Hardy here, and in other poems, there's this sort of wonderfully, self-consciously archaic language. Hardy wants to use really old dialect words, when he can, and there's power in that. And this is a poem composed in 1915. When we read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," when we read Pound's first Canto, remember that those poems are written and published at just the same time this poem's being written; poems with very different ways of proceeding and different kinds of language. Chapter 4.

Thomas Hardy Poem: "I Looked Up From My Writing" [00:26:24] In the second poem here, "I Looked Up From My Writing," the poet, the first person, is being interrupted at his desk at night. He is startled to see: …The moon's full gaze on me. Her meditative misty head Was spectral in its air, And I involuntarily said, 'What are you doing there?' [Hardy works in these song forms that, well, they sound like popular ballads, and he wants you to hear them as part of almost a kind of folk literature, which he draws on. The moon says to him:] 'Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole And waterway hereabout For the body of one with a sunken soul Who has put his life-light out. 'Did you hear his frenzied tattle? It was sorrow for his son Who is slain in brutish battle, Though he has injured none.

'And now [the moon says] I am curious to look Into the blinkered mind [the poet's] Of one who wants to write a book In a world of such a kind.' Her temper [the poet then says] overwrought me, And I edged to shun her view [to get out of the moonlight] For I felt assured she thought me One who should drown him too. Here, a neighbor father, crazed with grief at the death of his son, has drowned himself, killed himself, and the moon implies in its gaze that the poet should do so, too. In such a world it seems writing poems is a kind of – well, even surviving is a kind of guilty privilege. You could compare with this poem Kipling's poem; Kipling, one of the great apologists of empire, saying on page 153 of your book in the voice of a soldier, "If any question why we [we soldiers] died, / tell them, because our fathers lied" – a statement that is poignant, poignant and powerful in part because Kipling's own son died in the war ["Epitaphs of the War"]. Chapter 5.

Edward Thomas Poem: "Adlestrop" [00:29:10] This is a volume of poems published in 1917 by Edward Thomas and a portrait of Thomas, another soldier poet, not represented however as a soldier here: represented rather as an English citizen in tweed, a man out in and of nature. Thomas was born in 1878, so he was thirty-six when the war began. He began, almost at the same time as the war began, to write poems. He begins writing under the influence of his friend, Robert Frost. Frost and Thomas have a fascinating relationship, an important transatlantic exchange. Frost's famous poem, "The Road Not Taken," he sometimes described as being about Thomas and Thomas's own sense of regret and hesitation and indirection, to which Frost contrasted himself. Frost became in England a poet of New England whom Thomas was reading at that moment in such a way as to help enable him, Thomas, to become a great poet of England and of England's landscape and countryside and nature. There's a good selection from Thomas in your anthology.

I will read my favorite poem by Thomas, which is the first one, called "Adlestrop," on page 231: 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 a wonderful poem in its simplicity, modesty, directness, and reticence which yet provides the most expansive and exhilarating sense of the English landscape and of the power of a moment in time to enlarge and be pregnant with meaning. Notice Thomas's really superb nonchalance and offhandedness and simplicity.

"It was late June." "The steam hissed." There's a kind of colloquial clarity and confidence, quite different from the vernacular language in the Hardy poems I was just reading, which are also poems of the countryside. Here the name, the odd name "Adlestrop," prompts a memory, prompts a memory in such a way that a moment in time stands out, separated from other moments; just as the odd, unpoetic, unbeautiful name "Adlestrop" seems to stand out. There's a kind of poignant tension between the unbeautifulness of the name, the awkwardness, and yet the dignity of the name, and the sense of natural beauty that the poem will unfold. Here, the stopping of the train is like the interruption by memory of normal consciousness that's the basis of the poem. There's a sense that in this memory the poet somehow saw the name – presumably, I suppose, saw it on a signboard in the station, as you roll into the station and you see where you are. But there's more suggestion in it than that.

It's as if this moment were one in which the name and the place, the word and the thing, fully coincided, fully coincided in an experience of presence and immediacy where the world is all there and named, located, placed. The figure, the metaphor for this semiotic unity of word and thing is bird-song. Here bird-song is a kind of natural language, a language in which nature speaks, and speaks in such a way that the particular voice carries the import and authority of the general, just as the one bird seems to sing with many bird-songs by the end of the poem. And so Adlestrop itself suddenly seems to signify more, calling to mind in kind of rippling and radiating circles Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, England – all of it, the poet's home. At the same time it's also clear that this epiphany is a remembered experience. It's recalled. The poet's first word, "yes" – a wonderful affirmation – situates the poem in a dialogue as if someone had just said, "Have you ever been to Adlestrop?" Whether this dialogue is actual or internal, it doesn't really matter.

Part of the poem's force derives from the status of this moment as something remembered, and remembered within the context of a nation at war. Although I believe Thomas wrote the poem the year he enlisted but, I think, before his enlistment, you might feel as though Thomas is already on the train for France. There's a way in which the context of the war, too, shadows the poem and remains present in it. Don't you feel it in certain details: the eerie lack of people in this place? "No one left and no one came." In a sense it is an image of the English countryside at a moment in which it is being emptied out, its young men sent to France to die, a kind of no man's land already. Chapter 6. Siegfried Sassoon Poem: "Blighters'" [00:38:21] This is Siegfried Sassoon in uniform in 1916. Sassoon's poetry centers on hallucinatory overlays of home-front and battle-front.

Let's look at "'Blighters'" on page 389, a wonderfully angry poem; a poem that is situated in a music hall, presumably a London music hall: The House is crammed; tier beyond tier they grin And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din; 'We're sure the Kaiser loves the dear old Tanks!' I'd like to see a Tank come down the stalls, Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home', And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume. Here, there's an analogy between the music hall and the theater of war. It's as if the English populace were spectators only, consuming as entertainment war propaganda, which makes the poet hate them. He imagines here the eruption of the real into this representational space, and imagines it as a kind of attack on the working and middle class audiences of the music hall. The soldier becomes, in fantasy here, the spectator, as the war turns around and comes back, reversed by a kind of evil charm or spell, coming home.

And "home" is here made to rhyme with "Bapaume," bringing battlefront and home front together as a rhyme. There's an aggression towards the urban crowd here that recalls and exaggerates Yeats's attitude at the same time, really in the same years, in poems like "A Coat" or "The Fisherman." Chapter 7. Isaac Rosenberg Poem: "Louse Hunting" [00:41:09] In other Sassoon poems, the war comes home in other ways. For example, in "The Rear-Guard," just down the page here; or "Repression of War Experience," which is about traumatic repetition of battle; or in "Dreamers," where there is, again, a kind of juxtaposing of life in the trenches and life in the city. Rather than dwell longer on them though, and to make sure I get time for a couple more poems, I want to move on and consider – Here is a collection of Sassoon's poems, Counter-Attack, and this is The Poetry of Isaac Rosenberg. Here's a frontispiece with Rosenberg in a military coat. Rosenberg, besides a poet, was also an artist and created these self-portraits.

"Self-Portrait in France, 1915." Rosenberg, in contrast to Sassoon, was poor, Jewish, and writes a rather different kind of poem from those we have been looking at today. One of the most famous and extraordinary is "Louse Hunting," on page 506; a little bit further on in your book: Nudes – stark and glistening, Yelling in lurid glee. Grinning faces And raging limbs Whirl over the floor one fire. For a shirt verminously busy Yon soldier tore from his throat, with oaths Godhead might shrink at, but not the lice. And soon the shirt was aflare Over the candle he'd lit while we lay. Then we all sprang up and stript To hunt the verminous brood. [Here the soldiers are stripping their clothes off and attacking the lice that are attacking them.] Soon like a demons' pantomime The place was raging. [It's nighttime and the candles and flares are throwing shadows.] See the merry limbs in hot Highland fling Because some wizard vermin Charmed from the quiet this revel When our ears were half lulled By the dark music Blown from Sleep's trumpet.

A strange place for this poem to end. "Nudes," the poem begins. It's shocking and comic and pleasurable to see the armored men, uniformed men suddenly exposed – just naked bodies – to see them here bedeviled not by a gas attack or machine guns but lice, fleas. Rosenberg is writing not in those little crafted stanzas of Hardy or, for that matter, of Thomas. He's writing in a kind of strongly stressed free verse with variable line lengths, lots of – well there's a sense in which the poetry itself is exuberant and naked and full of life and vital; and naturalistic, you could say, in its representation. Rosenberg is giving us an anecdote from the trenches, and yet it slips very quickly into a sense of fable. The louse hunting, where these big men hunt these little things, these fleas: it becomes – when it's thrown by shadow as a kind of flickering image on the tent or trench wall, when it becomes represented, so to speak – it becomes a battle scene where gigantic forces "smutch supreme littleness." We are put in mind of how men are to the Gods as flies to men.

This is an analogy as old as, and found in, Homer. We are also put in mind of how the war is, in fact, anything but a revel, though it, too, may have been provoked by a cause as insignificant and hard to trace as "some wizard vermin." Those last lines, then, are so ominous and strange. Though these men have been brought to life from sleep, there's a sense that the trumpet will sound for them again and they will enter a dark sleep from which they won't wake, which is just the point of the next poem, "Returning, We Hear the Larks." I won't take time to read it, though, or talk about it, but instead I'd like to conclude – This is another great poet of the war who survived, though in, as I say, a wounded condition mentally, Ivor Gurney. Chapter 8. Wilfred Owen Poem: "Strange Meeting" [00:48:10] I want to conclude with a poem by Owen.

Let's see, this is page 528, just following "Dulce et Decorum Est," "Strange Meeting." This is a poem that – well, if the first poem demystifies one crucial thread of war ideology, that it is right and good to die for the country, this poem takes on another crucial element of war ideology that the enemy is an "other": the enemy is unlike me. Like Rosenberg, like Rosenberg's poem, this one comes out of and returns eventually to sleep. It is a kind of dream vision, Dantesque in its mode, and full of powerful iambic pentameter: It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, – By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained; Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground, And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan. 'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,' said the other, 'save the undone years, The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours, Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world, Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair, But mocks the steady running of the hour, And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here. For by my glee might many men have laughed, And of my weeping something had been left, Which must die now. I mean the truth untold, The pity of war, the pity war distilled. Now men will go content with what we spoiled, Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled. They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress. None will break ranks, tough nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery: To miss the march of this retreating world Into vain citadels that are not walled. Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels, I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, Even with truths that lie too deep for taint. I would have poured my spirit without stint But not through wounds; not on the cess of war. Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were. 'I am the enemy you killed, my friend. I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed. I parried; but my hands were loath and cold. Let us sleep now….' So, we'll stop now and move on to poems written during the same period and associated with Imagism on Monday. [end of transcript] Philip Edward Thomas 1878-1917 Philip Edward Thomas 1878-1917 Email Edward Thomas was born in London on 3rd March 1878, he was the youngest of 6 sons. His parents were of Welsh ancestry, and his father was a civil servant.

He spent his formative years in London, apart from school holidays, which he spent with relatives in south Wales and Wiltshire. Thomas was educated at St Paul's School, starting there in January 1894. After an initial period of unhappiness, he settled down and later was able to appreciate the opportunities the school offered. During his childhood, Edward acquired a knowledge of Natural History. During long walks he collected butterflies and birds' eggs, and noted details of the trees, flowers and butterflies he saw. These early notes led to published articles at the age of seventeen. The Woodland Life, his first book was published in 1897. Edward Thomas went up to Oxford in the autumn of 1897, winning a history scholarship to Lincoln College. He married Helen Noble in June 1899. Helen was the daughter of his early mentor James Ashcroft Noble. Their first child, a son, was born six months prior to Thomas's finals. Despite the fact that he was financially dependent on his father and now had a family to support Thomas never deviated from his ambition to write. His father wanted him to enter the civil service. During the next few years Thomas earned a rather precarious living as a writer.

He wrote essays, biographies, topographical books, reviews and introductions, as well as editing anthologies. He felt unfulfilled and stifled by his poverty and family responsibilities, which led to feelings of bitterness, frustration and depression. In order to escape, Thomas would stay with friends or go off on solo walking and cycling tours of England and Wales. Throughout all his problems his wife Helen remained loving and patient. In 1914 a small group of Georgian poets - Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfred Gibson and John Drinkwater - were living in and around the north -east Gloucestershire village of Dymock. Occasionally, Rupert Brooke stayed, and the poets wrote for a quarterly magazine, New Numbers, which was published by the group from Gibson's house. The group, along with other poets, became known as 'The Dymock Poets'. The American poet, Robert Frost, and his family arrived in the area in the spring of 1914, and moved into a cottage called 'Little Iddens', near the village. Thomas moved with his family to live next door to the Frosts in late summer 1914, not long after war was declared.

Edward Thomas and Robert Frost became great friends. The two took long walks in the surrounding countryside, and the evenings were spent with the other poets. They ate country food, drank the local cider, played charades cards, and word games. They also sang folk songs and wrote and read prose and poetry. It was during this time Frost, who admired Thomas's prose, encouraged Thomas to write poetry. Walter de la Mare and W H Davies had previously suggested this, but Thomas was doubtful, and had never attempted to. Thomas' respect for Frost and the gathering war clouds, which endangered all he loved finally persuaded Thomas to try writing poetry. Thomas first poem was written in December 1914. Thomas's 143 poems were written between December 1914 and January 1917 when he went to France. The poems published during his lifetime were published under Thomas's pseudonym, 'Edward Eastaway'. Between August 1914 and July 1915 Thomas could not decide whether to take his family to live in New England, near the Frosts, or whether to enlist.

Finally he decided to enlist, and was passed medically fit in July 1915 and joined the Artists Rifles - the same regiment that Wilfred Owen joined two months later. Thomas was a Lance Corporal 3 months after enlistment, and was instructing officers at Hare Hall Camp, near Romford, Essex. Wilfred Owen arrived there for training in November. Thomas composed over forty poems during the 10 months spent at Hare Hall. In August 1916 Thomas received his commission in the Royal Garrison Artillery and on September 20th his unit travelled to the Royal Artillery Barracks at Trowbridge, Wiltshire. Following 2 weeks leave Thomas went to Lydd in Kent for further training. Unexpectedly, he was given Christmas leave with his family. He arrived at the mobilisation camp at Codford, Salisbury Plain on January 15th, 1917. On January 29th he wrote to Helen from Southampton saying that once "over there" he would "say no more goodbyes . . ." The battery arrived at Le Harvre in bitterly cold weather. Thomas spent his first days either overhauling the guns or censoring the men's letters.

Thomas wrote to his wife, Helen almost daily for the next three months. The Battery entrained on February 4th, and arrived at Mondicourt on February 6th. On February 9th Thomas and half of the battery were sent to Dainville, where they went into billets on the Arras Road. A few days later Thomas was sent as Orderly Officer to Group 35 Army Artillery at their Headquarters in Arras. On March 9th,Thomas rejoined his battery and spent the next four weeks at Observation Posts at Ronville and Beaurains. At 7.30 am on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917, the first day of the battle of Arras, Edward Thomas, who was standing at the Beaurains Observation Post, was killed by the blast of a shell which exploded nearby. He lies buried in Agny Military Cemetery. The register gives the following details Name: THOMAS, PHILIP EDWARD

Question: Which poet, killed in World War One, wrote the poems 'Adlestrop' and 'Celandine?
Answer: EDWARD THOMAS