An Ivor Gurney poem - I Saw England (July Night)

NOT England in this photo, but I wanted some sunshine!  This is Valerian growing at New Quay, Cardiganshire, back in the summer.

I SAW ENGLAND (JULY NIGHT) by Ivor Gurney

She was a village
Of lovely knowledge
The high roads left her aside, she was forlorn, a maid -
Water ran there, dusk hid her, she climbed four-wayed,
Brown-gold windows showed last folk not yet asleep;
Water ran, was a centre of silence deep,
Fathomless deeps of pricked sky, almost fathomless
Hallowed an upward gaze in pale satin of blue,
And I was happy indeed, of mind, soul, body even
Having not given
A sign undoubtful of a dear England few
Doubt, not many have seen,
That Will Squele he knew and was so shriven,
Home of Twelth Night - Edward Thomas by Arras fallen,
Borrow and Hardy, Sussex tales out of Roman heights callen,
No madrigals or field-songs to my all reverent whim;
Till I got back I was dumb.

Although contemporaries, in poetry and as soldiers in WWI, I don't believe that Ivor Gurney and Edward Thomas ever met, yet Gurney had read ET's poetry, and in a short piece I have found in an article on the PN Review Online (which you have to be a member to access fully), thee is a quote about Thomas's poems from a letter Gurney wrote in November of 1917:

"Very curious they are, very interesting; nebulously intangibly beautiful.  But he had the same sickness of mind I have - the impossibility of serenity for any but the shortest space.  Such a mind produces little."

Gurney is suggesting that ET had the same mental instablility as Gurney - which saw him spent the latter half of his life in a mental asylum - he had self-diagnosed himself with neurasthenia.  I have read that Thomas WAS diagnosed with the same complaint at some point, but it is perhaps best not to jump to the obvious conclusions.  Thomas's poetry never really showed any imbalance in the way that Gurney's later poetry did.  Perhaps his writing about "the other man" or other subliminal approaches in his poetry or prose suggested this to Gurney - who would recognize it, being a fellow sufferer?

I know that Edward Thomas's widow Helen went to visit Gurney from 1932 onwards when he was in the asylum and once took him a map of Gloucestershire (how thoughtful of her) which brought him alive in a way few other things could, apart from music, which was his first love and real talent.  She kept up the meetings until his death from TB in 1937.

 She wrote of their first meeting:

‘we were met by a tall gaunt dishevelled man clad in pyjamas and dressing gown, to whom Miss Scott introduced me. He gazed with an intense stare into my face and took me silently by the hand. Then I gave him the flowers which he took with the same deeply moving intensity and silence. He then said, ‘You are Helen, Edward’s wife and Edward is dead.’ And I said, ‘Yes, let us talk of him.’ (H. Thomas, Time and Again: Memoirs and Letters, ed. M. Thomas, 1978, pp. 11-112.)  (This was copied from The Ivor Gurney Collection page - HERE.)

TO E.T. by Robert Frost

A sideways step today, with a poem by Robert Frost, who was such a close friend of Edward Thomas's and gave him so much encouragement to become and stay a poet.

Looking across Llandyfeisant churchyard.


TO E.T.

I slumbered with your poems on my breast,
Spread open as I dropped them half-read through
Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb,
To see if in a dream they brought of you

I might not have the chance I missed in life
Through some delay, and call you to your face
First soldier, and then poet, and then both,
Who died a soldier-poet of your race.

I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain
Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained -
And one thing more that was not then to say:
The Victory for what is lost and gained.

You went to meet the shell's embrace of fire
On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day
The war seemed over more for you than me,
But now for me than you - the other way.

How over, though, for even me who knew
The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine;
If I was not to speak of it to you
And see you pleased once more with words of mine?

Robert Frost.

The Signpost by R S Thomas

I am going to try and post poetry regularly, Edward Thomas and his contemporaries.  Here is R S Thomas, who is another addition to my poetry library.

THE SIGNPOST

Casgob, it said, 2
miles.  But I never went
there; left it like an ornament
on the mind's shelf, covered

with the dust of
its summers; a place on a diet
of the echoes of stopped
bells and children's

voices; white the architecture
of its clouds, stationary
its sunlight.  It was best
so, I need a museum

for storing the dream's
brittler particles in.  Time
is a main road, eternity
the turning that we don't take.

First Known When Lost

That is the title of an excellent poetry blog I visit (see my sidebar on Codlins and Cream).  I thought I would start the New Year off with poetry, and have been reading poems daily this past week.  Thomas Hardy, R S Thomas, Edward Thomas. . .  I hope you enjoy this one of ET's:

FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST

I never had noticed it until
'Twas gone, - the narrow copse
Where now the woodman lops
The last of the willows with his bill,

It was not more than a hedge overgrown,
One meadow's breadth away
I passed it day by day,
Now the soil is bare as a bone,

And black betwixt two meadows green,
Though fresh-cut faggot ends
Of hazel make some amends
With a gleam as if flowers they had been.

Strange it could have hidden so near!
And now I see as I look
That the small winding brook,
A tributary's tributary, rises there.


This is one of my favourite poems of Edward Thomas.  How we often take things for granted in the familiar landscape around us, hardly deigning it with a second glance until it is altered, ruined . . .

Edward Thomas walked like the rest of us drew breath.  It was his escape from reality, his reward for hard work, his balm, his challenge, his inspiration, his creative time, his life.  In a day he might walk 20 miles or far more, taking in the landscape he saw around him in great minutiae, jotting down sentences, descriptions in his notebook to write up later in his poetic prose which finally matured into poetry.  I can just imagine him pulling up short by this little field edge corner and thinking, it was there yesterday and now . . . and out came his notebook.

RIP Edward Thomas 1878 - 1917

At 7.30 a.m. on this day in 1917, at the Battle of Arras, Philip Edward Thomas lost his life in the blast from an exploding shell as he was standing at the Beaurains Observation Post.  He is buried in Agny Military Cemetary.  

In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again. 

Edward Thomas.

How COULD she do that?

 A quiet corner of Laugharne, a village that ET knew well.

Last week my Edward Thomas Fellowship newsletter arrived, but I was feeling somewhat hornswaggled at the time with this fresh virus, so only settled down to read it earlier on this week.

I have always been a champion of the underdog, I respect honesty in others (and am stupidly honest myself) and I guess the term "what you see is what you get" was written with me in mind.  I am also a Big Softee (the capitals are essential) and my kids used to call me Softee Mummie.  Because of this, I was absolutely horrified to read Richard Emeny's article about the Thomas's friendship with the Ransomes (as in Arthur Ransome of Swallows and Amazons  - et al - fame).  Apparently he and his wife Ivy married secretly for some reason or another in 1909.  ET and Helen were their witnesses.

Anyway, Mr Emeny goes on to write about a time during the First World War (just after ET had joined the Army) when ET's daughter Myfanwy went to stay with Ivy Ransome and her daughter Tabitha, her husband being busy in Russia, as a War correspondent.  Myfanwy wrote letters home to Helen, often asking Ivy how words should be spelt as she wasn't very good at spelling.  But instead of spelling the words that Myfanwy wanted to use, Ivy spelt out  "the most cruel and spiteful criticisms of Mother's looks and behaviour" which, being read by Helen, already distraught and with nerves as taut as piano wires over Edward going to be a soldier, absolutely broke her heart.  Then she gradually realized that a child would never write such awful things and the truth dawned on her. 

I just cannot believe how spiteful and downright nasty that woman was, and to feel SO sorry for poor Helen, who was - at best - ill-equipped to cope with such venom, especially without the support - ANY support, just having ET under the same roof would have helped her - of Edward at this dreadful time.  You may imagine, subsequent parcels of goodies from Ivy (guilty conscience?) were returned unopened, and it will be no great surprise to hear that the Ransomes divorced in 1924, and his daughter Tabitha refused to see him after that (doubtless poisoned by her mother's lies).  Ivy apparently saw herself as a lady, and perhaps had lowered herself to marry Ransome in the first place, hence the secrecy.  Ransome's biographer, Hugh Brogan, wrote that "it was impossible to be a good husband to Ivy". 

Meanwhile, I am sitting here writing this 100 years on, and wishing SO MUCH that I could scoop Helen up and give her a big hug, and tell her not to pay any attention to such a jealous miserable b*tch.  I won't tell you what I'd have liked to say to Ivy!  Ain't life strange?

Walk around Llyn Llech Owain - a favourite spot for Edward Thomas

You must forgive the prolonged interval since I last posted on this blog.  Unfortunately illness played a part, and I think I had quite over-egged the Edward Thomas cake by putting in so much reading and note-taking before I gave my talk last May.  Now my brain seems to be functioning more clearly, and I have some fresh books about Edward Thomas and his work, and I am gradually taking a deep breath and moving on.

Above is a photo of the area at the edge of Llyn Llech Owain at Gorslas in Carmarthenshire - a favourite walk of Edward Thomas's when he was staying in Ammanford.  Just out of sight to the right is the spring which fills the lake, and it is quite a determined gushing spring at that.  The legend which is associated with the lake is best told in Thomas's own words:

". . . and Llyn Llech Owen, and have wondered that only one legend should be remembered of those that have been born of all the gloom and the golden lilies and the plover that glories in its loneliness; for I stand in need of a legend when I come down to it through rolling heathery land, through bogs, among blanched and lichened crags, and the deep sea of heather, with a few flowers and many withered ones, of red and purple whin, of gorse and gorse-flower, and (amongst the gorse) a grey curling dead grass, which all together make the desolate colour of a "black mountain"; and when I see the water for ever waved except among the weeds in the centre, and see the water-lily leaves lifted and resembling a flock of wild-fowl, I cannot always be content to see it so remote, so entirely inhuman, and like a thing a poet might make to show a fool what solitude was, and as it remains with its one poor legend of a man who watered his horse at a well, and forgot to cover it with the stone, and riding away, saw the water swelling over the land from the well, and galloped back to stop it, and saw the lake thus created and bounded by the track of his horse's hooves; and thus it is a thing from the beginning of the world that has never exchanged a word with men, and now never will, since we have forgotten the language, though on some days the lake seems not to have forgotten it."

I couldn't resist climbing up this little incline, to see the view . . .  It reminded me very much of Canford Heath in Dorset, which I know quite well from years gone by.  Better view from the top though.

It is not at its most welcoming in winter.  Poor peaty soil supports only moor grass, heather and ling and gorse, and a few pine trees.  Since the time ET knew it, the area was planted up with conifer forests (by the Forestry Commission) but this has all been cleared now and improvements for wildlife are being made all the time.  Dormice boxes for one.

 

The Visitor Centre - which had underfloor heating, and was a nice place to sit and warm up out of the wind.

 Display board telling you something about the site now.

A little bit about the history of this area.

Some of the wild birds regularly seen here.

Some photos of the Dormice and the nesting boxes they are putting up.  The chew-holes in the Hazlenuts are characteristic.

I hope you can read this - some more of the history and archaeology of this area.

The sombre January landscape was lit fleetingly by sun.

 

I wonder what ET would make of it now?  I am sure he would appreciate the fact that it is now an SSSI, and that steps are being taken to balance the flora and fauna of the area, following the depredation of the Forest Commission plantings.  He would probably hate the "managed" and "controlled" aspects of it though and prefer it wild and unvisited as when he knew it.

Perhaps the last word could go to Walter de la Mare, a good friend of ET's, and whose poems were reviewed by the latter, this included "Sorcery", the first verse of which is here:

"What voice is that I hear
Crying across the pool?"
"It is the voice of Pan you hear,
Crying his sorceries shrill and clear,
In the twilight dim and cool."