In 1992, 24 years ago, our friend Isabel Healy, gave us a Christmas present of a marvellous compendium of poems called “Lifelines”.

These were favourite poems gathered from famous people (among them Isabel herself) and edited by Niall MacMonagle and some of his pupils in Wesley College- this particular version (I think it was the third volume) had a foreward by Seamus Heaney.

This book has travelled with us over the years (this would be its third house) and always finds a spot in my favourite room for reading poetry-the loo.
It reached the loo in our bathroom in Le Presbytere this summer and I have been dipping in since then. As usual I have discovered a poem which I never remember seeing before, this one the selection of Judi Dench and written in 1917 by Edward Thomas.

It is a very English poem and just resounds with the sounds of a warm English summer’s day, I also love the way it shoves in rhymes, unexpectedly and almost playfully.

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.

But I do love a tale with a nice coincidence in the tail !
Having very late in life “discovered” Edward Thomas’ “Adlestrop” I went looking to find something about this, previously unknown to me, poet.

He is often labelled a “War Poet” although rather older than most, being in his forties and an established family man when war was declared.

His friend and neighbour in England, the poet Robert Frost, headed back to his native America at the start of the war and Thomas was left agonising whether he, although too old for compulsary conscription, should volunteer for King and Country.
While in this dilemma Frost sent him a copy of his latest poem which , coincidentially is also in the same selection of Lifelines in which I found Adlestrop.
This poem Thomas took as a sign from the fates and promptly signed up and sailed to France where he was very soon killed in a battle near Calais.

The poem from Frost which inspired his death is also a favourite of mine;
The Road not Taken.