Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917)
When First I Came HereWHEN first I came here I had hope,
Hope for I knew not what. Fast beat
My heart at the sight of the tall slope
Or grass and yews, as if my feet Only by scaling its steps of chalk
Would see something no other hill
Ever disclosed. And now I walk
Down it the last time. Never will My heart beat so again at sight
Of any hill although as fair
And loftier. For infinite
The change, late unperceived, this year, The twelfth, suddenly, shows me plain.
Hope now,--not health nor cheerfulness,
Since they can come and go again,
As often one brief hour witnesses,-- Just hope has gone forever. Perhaps
I may love other hills yet more
Than this: the future and the maps
Hide something I was waiting for. One thing I know, that love with chance
And use and time and necessity
Will grow, and louder the heart's dance
At parting than at meeting be.
 UK Buyers | Purchase the BookCollected Poems (Paperback)
by Edward Thomas (Author) Though sometimes classified with Owen, Rosenberg and Sassoon as a 'war poet', he was rather a poet who died tragically in the war, and whose main subjects were the English countryside and its people, and the solitude of the observing self. The present edition offers the complete poems together with detailed editorial apparatus in what has become acknowledged as the standard edition by R. George Thomas. It also includes Thomas's remarkable prose War Diary of 1917.
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