NETTLES and cow’s parsley in the rain are the unlikely provokers of two of Edward Thomas’s pastoral reflections cum introspective musings.

TALL NETTLES

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done

These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough

Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:

Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.

This corner of the farmland I like most:

As well as any bloom upon a flower

I like the dust on the nettles, never lost

Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.

IT RAINS

It rains, and nothing stirs within the fence

Anywhere through the orchard’s untrodden, dense

Forest of parsley. The great diamonds

Of rain on the grassblades there is none to break,

Or the fallen petals further down to shake.

And I am nearly as happy as possible

To search the wilderness in vain though well,

To think of two walking, kissing there,

Drenched, yet forgetting the kisses of the rain:

Sad, too, to think that never, never again,

Unless alone, so happy shall I walk

In the rain. When I turn away, on its fine stalk

Twilight has fined to naught, the parsley flower

Figures, suspended still and ghostly white,

The past hovering as it revisits the light.