Remembrance Sunday comes round again, and this week’s piece, though not in itself a war poem, does confront us, indirectly but powerfully, with one truth about the Great War which we are understandably reluctant now to recognise, but which goes some way towards explaining the enthusiasm with which the war was initially greeted: namely, that enlistment gave to many the chance of escape from an unhappy and unfulfilled working life. And one such was the poet Edward Thomas, who as a mature married man had no need to volunteer, but did so anyway in 1915, going on to be killed at Arras in 1917. This poem looks back on the years of badly paid literary hackwork that had been his lot in the years leading up to the war, and it is hard not to speculate on what might have happened had he not been caught up in the great events of his time. Would the dam that was holding in all that pent-up rare original poetry of his own never have broken? Would he have simply carried on with the drudgery he so despised, his hand continuing to crawl on towards age, until the last of those hundred leaves fell from the willow?

The Long Small Room

The long small room that showed willows in the west
Narrowed up to the end the fireplace filled,
Although not wide. I liked it. No one guessed
What need or accident made them so build.

Only the moon, the mouse and the sparrow peeped
In from the ivy round the casement thick.
Of all they saw and heard there they shall keep
The tale for the old ivy and older brick.

When I look back I am like moon, sparrow, and mouse
That witnessed what they could never understand
Or alter or prevent in the dark house.
One thing remains the same – this my right hand

Crawling crab-like over the clean white page,
Resting awhile each morning on the pillow,
Then once more starting to crawl on towards age.
The hundred last leaves stream upon the willow.

Edward Thomas