When the Welsh poet Edward Thomas (1898-1917), who had signed up for the British Army in 1915, was asked what he would be fighting for, he stopped, picked up a pinch of earth and crumbled it between finger and thumb before letting it fall. He then replied, “Literally, for this”.
In ‘Adlestrop’ he describes an unscheduled stop that he had made at a small train station in Gloucestershire in the course of a train journey on June 24, 1914, a little more than a month before the war began.
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 nameAnd 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.
Thomas was killed at Arras in April 1917.
RIP.
Some observation, a real far out right person won Maryland who is a member of the league of the south. I don’t like some of Obama’s policies but I think the Republican Party with the religious right and this dude is into Christian Reconstruction needs to Another observation the great love of Texas among folks in the Republican right that can’t stand latinos or blacks. In fact some of the Republican Right hates multiculturalism but cities like Houston are now more multicultural than LA. Too much of the Republican Party is becoming a cross between Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul. Paul is a bircher and the Birchers are heavily involved with the Tea Party. In fact Ted Cruz whose wife works for Goldman Sachs use far right speech about Agenda 21.