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 Gloustershire.
Edward Thomas
I have always
loved this poem for its imagery, but after listening
to Radio 4
once people were talking about it being only about that, whereas my teacher
(Mr Bob Crick at the time at Rosemary Musker High, Thetford) taught me
that it had an anti-war message. No one on the programme mentioned this.
The reason there was no-one on the platform, he said, was because they used
to send whole towns/villages off to war in the same regiment and when a battle
went wrong there would be no-one left in a town/village.
I have always
been annoyed that the poem was taken by people at face
value as about a nice summer day. I was taught to look
deeper into the poem and wonder why the 'haycocks (were)
dry' and why the fair was 'still and lonely' much more
sinister than just a bare platform, if it was not for
this I do
not think I would like Adlestrop as much as I do, it is so much more clever
than a pretty poem.