{"id":9463,"date":"2014-11-09T14:57:20","date_gmt":"2014-11-09T14:57:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=9463"},"modified":"2014-11-09T15:37:39","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T15:37:39","slug":"for-remembrance-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/for-remembrance-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"For Remembrance Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eilean<\/a><\/p>\n

When the Welsh poet Edward Thomas<\/a> (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, \u201cLiterally, for this\u201d. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Yes. I remember Adlestrop\u2014
\nThe name, because one afternoon
\nOf heat the express-train drew up there
\nUnwontedly. It was late June.<\/p>\n

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
\nNo one left and no one came
\nOn the bare platform. What I saw
\nWas Adlestrop\u2014only the name<\/p>\n

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
\nAnd meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
\nNo whit less still and lonely fair
\nThan the high cloudlets in the sky.<\/p>\n

And for that minute a blackbird sang
\nClose by, and round him, mistier,
\nFarther and farther, all the birds
\nOf Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thomas was killed at Arras in April 1917.<\/p>\n

RIP. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[90],"tags":[1105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9463"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9472,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9463\/revisions\/9472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}