The Annotated Collected Poems

Edward Thomas, Edna Longley

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2011
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780370019
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Edward Thomas wrote a lifetime's poetry in two years. Already a dedicated prose writer and influential critic, he became a poet only in December 1914, at the age of 36. In April 1917 he was killed at Arras. Often viewed as a 'war poet', he wrote nothing directly about the trenches; also seen as a 'nature poet', his symbolic reach and generic range expose the limits of that category too. A central figure in modern poetry, he is among the half-dozen poets who remade English poetry in the early 20th century.Edna Longley published an earlier edition of Thomas's poetry in 1973. Her work advanced his reputation as a major modern poet. Now she has produced a revised version, which includes all his poems and draws on freshly available archive material. The extensive Notes contain substantial quotations from Thomas's prose, letters and notebooks, as well as a new commentary on the poems. The prose hinterland behind Edward Thomas's poems helps us to understand their depth and complexity, together with their contexts in his troubled personal life, in wartime England, and in English poetry. Edna Longley also shows how Thomas's criticism feeds into his poetry, and how he prefigured critical approaches, such as 'ecocriticism', that are now applied to his poems. The text of this edition, which has a detailed textual apparatus, differs in small but significant ways from that of other extant collections of Thomas's poems.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• NOTE ON TEXT OF THIS EDITION
• Up in the Wind
• November
• March
• Old Man
• The Signpost
• After Rain
• Interval
• The Other
• Birds’ Nests
• The Mountain Chapel
• The Manor Farm
• An Old Song I
• An Old Song II
• The Combe
• The Hollow Wood
• The New Year
• The Source
• The Penny Whistle
• A Private
• Snow
• Adlestrop
• Tears
• Over the Hills
• The Lofty Sky
• The Cuckoo
• Swedes
• The Unknown Bird
• The Mill-Pond
• Man and Dog
• Beauty
• The Gypsy
• Ambition
• House and Man
• Parting
• First known when lost
• May 23
• The Barn
• Home
• The Owl
• The Child on the Cliffs
• The Bridge
• Good-night
• But these things also
• The New House
• The Barn and the Down
• Sowing
• March the Third
• Two Pewits
• Will you come?
• The Path
• The Wasp Trap
• A Tale
• Wind and Mist
• A Gentleman
• Lob
• Digging
• Lovers
• In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
• Head and Bottle
• Home
• Health
• The Huxter
• She dotes
• Song
• A Cat
• Melancholy
• Tonight
• April
• The Glory
• July
• The Chalk-Pit
• Fifty Faggots
• Sedge-Warblers
• I built myself a house of glass
• Words
• The Word
• Under the Woods
• Haymaking
• A Dream
• The Brook
• Aspens
• The Mill-Water
• For These
• Digging
• Two Houses
• Cock-Crow
• October
• There’s nothing like the sun
• The Thrush
• Liberty
• This is no case of petty right or wrong
• Rain
• The clouds that are so light
• Roads
• The Ash Grove
• February Afternoon
• I may come near loving you
• Those things that poets said
• No one so much as you
• The Unknown
• Celandine
• ‘Home’
• Thaw
• If I should ever by chance
• If I were to own
• What shall I give?
• And you, Helen
• The Wind’s Song
• Like the touch of rain
• When we two walked
• Tall Nettles
• The Watchers
• I never saw that land before
• The Cherry Trees
• It rains
• Some eyes condemn
• The sun used to shine
• No one cares less than I
• As the team’s head-brass
• After you speak
• Bright Clouds
• Early one morning
• It was upon
• Women he liked
• There was a time
• The Green Roads
• The Gallows
• The Dark Forest
• When he should laugh
• How at once
• Gone, gone again
• That girl’s clear eyes
• What will they do?
• The Trumpet
• When first
• The Child in the Orchard
• Lights Out
• The long small room
• The Sheiling
• The Lane
• Out in the dark
• The sorrow of true love
• NOTES
• BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE
• ABBREVIATIONS
• FURTHER BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX OF TITLES
• Copyright