Sunday Poetry - Edward Thomas

I've been listening to the audiobook of Graham Swift's new novel, Mothering Sunday. It's a beautiful book, set in 1924, with the lingering grief of the Great War affecting all the characters. I kept thinking of Edward Thomas & his poetry of the English countryside. He was also a war poet, killed at Arras in 1917. So, here is one of Thomas's sad, melancholy poems about parting.

Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks.
I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.

No one knew I was going away,
I thought myself I should come back some day.

I heard the brook through the town gardens run.
O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun.

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head.
'A fine morning, sir', a shepherd said.

I could not return from my liberty,
To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.