OF THE DAY

THOMAS HARDY and Edward Thomas both had literary lives before they were known as poets; Hardy as a celebrated novelist, Thomas as a freelance writer, editor, and reviewer. But while Hardy’s poetry spans 60 years or more, Thomas’s comes from the short period 19151917, before his death at the Battle Of Arras. Birds loom large in Thomas’s much loved poem Adlestrop and in Hardy’s Proud Songsters. 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. PROUD SONGSTERS The thrushes sing as the sun is going, And the finches whistle in ones and pairs, And as it gets dark loud nightingales

In bushes Pipe, as they can when April wears, As if all Time were theirs. These are brand-new birds of twelvemonths’ growing, Which a year ago , or less than twain, No finches were, nor nightingales,

Nor thrushes, But only particles of grain, And earth, and air, and rain.