Toe in the Water

Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas

The Daily Poem today called for us to write of a favourite poet, preferably in the style of that poet. Naturally, I thought of Dylan Thomas, the master of free verse, and attempted a little something in as close as I can get to his style.

But then I thought of the other Thomas, the one no one has ever heard of, that Edward Thomas who was encouraged by Robert Frost to turn his hand to poetry. At the time I discovered him, his work was as though tailor-made for me, angst-ridden teenager that I was, and I recognised a kindred spirit immediately. In the first poem of his that I read, The Unknown Bird, I fell under his spell of sad, introspective emotion. The other boys laughed at the words “La-la-la,” but I discerned more than just the sound.

Thomas was young when he wrote his poems and he was killed in the Great War, just another statistic of the slaughter on the western front. Never a war poet (he had not the anger and resentment of poets like Sassoon or Graves), he is worth remembering even so. It was death that he was preparing for and it runs like a prophetic thread through all his poetry. Good on yer, Edward.

Here’s a link to that poem, The Unknown Bird:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57206/the-unknown-bird


Word Count: 231