Featured Poem: Adlestrop

Although we're back to grey skies and rain again today, this week's poem is a reminder that we're getting closer and closer to those sunny summer months when the English countryside is at its glorious best and time seems to stand still.

 

Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Adlestrop –

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop – only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than in the high cloudlets in the sky,

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and father, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

 

Edward Thomas