Adlestrop – Reflections on a Favourite Poem
Adlestrop by Edward Thomas is a well loved poem that appears in many anthologies. I have loved the poem since childhood, here are my reflections on the poem.
If you are not familiar with the poem Adlestrop please click here for a full version of the poem
I was ten years old when I first encountered the poem Adlestrop by Edward Thomas. Each week for homework we were required to choose a poem from our text book ,copy it out in our exercise book and learn it by heart. Then during the lesson each pupil would take their turn at standing in front of the class and reciting their chosen poem. I chose Adlestrop because it was one of the shorter poems in the book, but there as something haunting about the poem and it has stayed with me ever since.
It is unusual because it begins with the word yes. It is as the poet is answering a question or perhaps just reaching back in his memory to recall a fleeting moment when his train stopped unexpectedly at the station. We don’t know where he was going or where he had come from, all we know is that the train paused briefly at Adlestrop Station on a hot afternoon in late June. As he glanced out of the window he saw the station name. He looked beyond an saw the trees and fields, and the sky, he heard the noises of the train, then nothing, no one coming and going just stillness and a blackbird singing near by. Then as if rippling outward he becomes aware of other more distant bird song.
I don’t know why I loved the poem then, it must have been the beauty of the words that enchanted me. Since then there have been many times that I have glanced out of a train window and fleetingly glimpsed a beautiful view, then almost in the blink of an eye it has gone. I was never part of that world, never really there, just a spectator looking into a picture.
Image via Wikipedia
The poem doesn’t tell us, but Edward Thomas wrote the poem in early 1915 about a journey he had made in June 1914. He glimpsed stillness and tranquillity of a summer afternoon in Gloucestershire at a time when the country was just two months away from the declaration of war and the devastation it would bring. He could not have known when he wrote the poem in 1915 that two years later he would become one of the thousands of men whose lives were cut short so brutally by the war.
Image via Wikipedia
When he stopped so fleetingly at Adlestrop he would have been travelling on a Great Western train, a proud company now long gone. The railway still runs through Adlestrop, but the station vanished in the 1960’s a victim of Dr Beeching,s cuts. Even if by some chance a train drew up there unexpectedly today the passengers would be unaware of the bird song because the train windows no longer open (except the vestibule windows on an HST) and it is unlikely that they would see much of beauty through the grimy windows. More importantly they would be travelling on a First Great Western service, so most of them would be standing and more worried about their aching feet that the beauty of the moment.
Please take a look at my other railway articles
Travel Back in Time on The North Norfolk Railway
Discover The Beauty of Norfolk on The Bittern Line
Liked it
Thank was nicely written, thank you for sharing.
Interesting! Makes me want to visit the place and have a look.;)
I never heard this poem. I will look into it. Thanks.
Good article, and very interesting.
It is this ability of poetry to allow us to travel inward and outward that makes poetry so powerful. I can relate to your love of poetry.
Beautiful poetry, thanks for the link.
Some poems just get under your skin, don’t they? I enjoyed this read.
Christine
I love that poem, you are right it has a haunting quality. I enjoyed reading your article.
Very interesting…
Enjoyed read. very interesting!
Its lovely when a piece of writing sticks in your mind for ever because of the feelings it provokes. A lovely write.
very nice article…and picx too…keep sharing
Nice sharing and a well done post.
I’ve been to Adlestrop, ‘bidden’ by the poem! It retains a remoteness, with meandering dusty lanes and old houses, so that you can still hear a lot of “birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire” — but you won’t find the station. There is a connection with Jane Austen, whose uncle, I believe, was rector at the church. So, long before Edward Thomas’s visit, and even the railway, one of our greatest novelist used to go there, presumably from Bath.