I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE

Poetry Editor

Monday 18 February 2013

WITH a quiet subtlety of language, Edward Thomas paints a rural landscape that haunted him and may haunt the reader too.

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Lesley Duncan’s Poem of the Day

I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE

I never saw that land before,

And now can never see it again;

Yet, as if by acquaintance hoar

Endeared, by gladness and by pain,

Great was the affection that I bore

To the valley and the river small,The cattle, the grass, the bare ash trees,The chickens from the farmsteads, allElm-hidden, and the tributariesDescending at equal interval;The blackthorns down along the brookWith wounds yellow as crocusesWhere yesterday the labourer's hookHad sliced them cleanly; and the breezeThat hinted all and nothing spoke.I neither expected anythingNor yet remembered: but some goalI touched then; and if I could singWhat would not even whisper my soulAs I went on my journeying.I should use, as the trees and birds did,A language not to be betrayed;And what was hid should still be hidExcepting from those like me madeWho answer when such whispers bid.

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I NEVER SAW THAT LAND BEFORE

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