Image: William Wordsworth – Edward McInnes – National Portrait Gallery, London
William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by Joy”
In “Surprised by Joy,” the speaker’s mystic musing reveals his soul yearning; Wordsworth has revealed that the poem was urged by his deceased daughter.
Introduction and Text of “Surprised by Joy”
William Wordsworth has reported that this poem was “was in fact suggested by my daughter Catharine long after her death.” The poem’s mystic musing reveals the speaker’s soul craving.
William Wordsworth’s “Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind” is a Petrarchan sonnet with the traditional octave whose rime scheme is ABBAABBA and the traditional sestet with the rime scheme CDCDCD. The octave features two discrete quatrains and the sestet features two tercets.
Surprised by Joy
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find? Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Commentary on “Surprised by Joy”
The speaker senses the presence of his daughter, who had died many years earlier.
Octave First Quatrain: The Urge to Share Joy
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb, That spot which no vicissitude can find?
The speaker is animated claiming to have been “surprised by joy.” The surprise of this joy impelled him to “share the transport” with his companion. He felt “impatient as the Wind” and unthinkingly turns to comment on his euphoria but then suddenly is brought back to the reality that the person with whom he intended to share his feeling is “deep buried in the silent tomb.”
Having died, his companion can no longer be accosted by the “vicissitude[s]” of the wind, the sun, or other joyful expressions of nature. The speaker is alone in his joy, and he is then compelled to capture that odd moment when the joy had been so strong that it made him briefly forget the death and think his loved one still alive and by his side.
Octave Second Quatrain: Strong Bonds Beyond the Grave
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind— But how could I forget thee?—Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour, Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
In the second quatrain of the octave, the speaker then reasons that his momentary lapse was caused by his deep “Love, faithful love”; this strong connection based on profound love heralded the departed loved one to the speaker’s mind, making him virtually feel that she indeed stood beside him as the joy swept through his being.
Sestet First Tercet: Reliving Grief
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore, Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
But then the speaker questions the idea implied by his brief moment of forgetfulness that he could ever forget his beloved. He asserts rhetorically through his question that no power could exert itself sufficiently to “blind” him to his “most grievous loss.”
The speaker then avers that having that thought of the fact that his beloved had died brought “the worst pang that sorrow ever bore.” However, he then qualifies that claim by stating that there was one—”one only”—other occasion when he had suffered such a grief.
Sestet Second Tercet: Distressing Awareness
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
That other occasion occurred as he “stood forlorn” just after the death of his loved one, probably by the gravesite. At that time, as he stood by the grave of the departed, he suffered deeply “knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more.”
The speaker recalls the distressing awareness that he would never look upon “that heavenly face” again. He remembers thinking that time “neither present time, nor years unborn” would ever resolve the grief he was experiencing.
The Efficacy of Strong Emotion
Strong emotion can bring about many different kinds of worldly experiences. The strong feeling that penetrates the heart and then runs beyond the mind is capable of attracting the soul in its infinite wisdom and storehouse of thoughts and experiences and eliciting from the soul the very objects on which the mind and heart have depended for love and affection.
Image: William Wordsworth – Henry William Pickersgill – National Portrait Gallery, London
those big swirls through the sky startle—Vincent’s vision must have been something much less than twenty / twenty to have seen stars that big. church goers would think some revelation at hand, the second coming perhaps if the stars were that damned big. from his window his view of the trees shaped the trees like sheep. and the rolling hills like the hips of a well-nourished woman. the lights are on in many of the houses. long loaves of bread being pulled out of the oven, fresh bottles of Chablis, and little François recounting to papa his exploits with Marie, and papa laughing with a wide mouth showing its contents, and maman’s brow forming its quiet frown, but outside, a mourner on his way home carrying his bundle will step inside the church and lip a little prayer trying to pray his way back to love and hope and, perhaps, the will to keep on. those bushes that loom up like a fire, did you want us to see fire? the fire in the stars is not enough, Vincent? you had to lap our lenses with a flaming bush? eleven stars and a crescent moon, almost a horseshoe that moon, all swirling in halos. Vincent, you have painted the wind that raises a storm across the sky. and now his T-shirt bears your art, tempting me to bare my heart to your stars.
Image: Robert Graves – National Portrait Gallery, London
Robert Graves’ “Not Dead”
The speaker in Robert Graves’ elegy “Not Dead” remembers his son who died in war; his elegiac tribute resurrects the young man as a spiritual reality.
Introduction and Text of “Not Dead”
Actually, the speaker in Robert Graves’ “Not Dead” does more than just remember because in his act of dramatizing the son’s spiritual qualities, he renders the young man’s presence as something quite tangible.
The elegy plays out in a curtal sonnet, a form created by Father Gerard Manley Hopkins. The sonnet may be considered innovative because the rime-scheme—aabccb cbbdd—differs from the traditional abcabc dcbdc or abcabc dbcdc.
Not Dead
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke Rough bark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Over the whole wood in a little while Breaks his slow smile.
Commentary on “Not Dead”
The speaker in Graves’ “Not Dead” is remembering his son who died in war, but this particular remembering also dramatizes the resurrection of the young man as a spiritual reality.
First Movement: Walking to Clear the Mind
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke
In the opening line of Robert Graves’ “Not Dead,” the speaker locates himself in a wood, “Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain.” He has gone for a simple walk to clear his mind to allow himself to mourn his loss.
However, instead of mourning the loss of his son, he transforms that loss into a spiritual reality, asserting, “I know that David’s with me here again.” The spiritual presence of the son made itself known to the father, as the father walks through the woods. The calmness of the natural setting has rendered the speaker capable of sensing the spiritual level of being.
Instead of dramatizing the physical absence of his son, the speaker begins to muse on the spiritual reality of the son’s presence. The speaker avers that his son, David, influences the universe in a positive manner:”All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.”
He is insisting that David “is”—not “was,” as might be expected in remarking about the deceased. The importance of that line is so strong that it is later repeated intact. The speaker’s sense of his son’s essence remains with him.
Second Movement: The Ethereal Speaker
Rough bark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses.
In a way of supporting his astounding claim that David is, indeed, with him again, and that David “is,” the speaker suggests that the qualities he finds in nature, in fact, resurrect the qualities of his son. The speaker lovingly touches the “[r]ough bark of the friendly oak.” The oak is “friendly,” suggesting the same familial and familiar relationship he enjoyed with his son.
The speaker “caressingly” “strokes” the bark; the act of listening to and perhaps discussing ideas with his son is brought back to his mind by this simple natural act of touching the bark of a tree.
Then the speaker hears the “bubbling” of a brook and avers that that sound is David’s voice. He continues finding his son in the pleasant odor of the burning turf, in the sound of a bird melody and in the beauty of the primroses.
Third Movement: Summary of a Life
All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Over the whole wood in a little while Breaks his slow smile.
Then the speaker repeats the important line that describes his son: “All that is simple, happy, strong, he is.” This line offers the summation of the life of the deceased, and it serves as a signifier for the speaker as he dramatizes David’s qualities in order to resurrect the spirit of his son.
The final two lines—”Over the whole wood in a little while / Breaks his slow smile—reveal the success of the speaker’s dramatic attempts to summon his son’s spirit from the physical grave.
The speaker can sense David’s smile in the “whole wood,” and the speaker’s mourning is transcended by the “simple, happy, strong” qualities that were and, more importantly, are the hallmark of his son as a soul.
The speaker will still miss the physical presence of his son, but the son’s soul qualities will live on in the resurrection and drama of this speaker/poet’s creation. The speaker comes to realize that the soul is permanent, even though the body is not.
Born in Wimbledon, a wealthy suburb of London, in 1895, Robert Graves [1] enjoyed a long career as a poet, biographer, novelist, translator, classical scholar, and mythographer, before dying in Majorca in 1985.
Robert Graves was twice married, producing four children in each marriage. The poem “Not Dead” grows out of the war death of his son, David. Between marriages, Graves lived with the American poet, Laura Riding (aka Laura Riding Jackson and Laura Riding Gottschalk, née Reichenthal), who is associated with the Fugitive Movement (See “The Fugitive-Agrarian Movement in Poetry.”
Graves’ dalliance with Riding provides his biography with an especially dramatic episode [2]. Riding took a fancy to the husband of one of their friends, and when she could not win him, she jumped out a three-story window, fracturing her pelvis in three places.
Graves had tried to stop Riding from jumping by jumping out the second-floor window himself. They both recovered from their traumatic injuries. Graves went on to marry his second wife; Riding went on the win the Nashville Poetry Prize in 1924 [3] and marry Schuyler Jackson in 1941.
Most noted for his poetry, Grave’s produced upwards of 150 works in his prolific career. It is thought that Graves quipped [4]: “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.”
on the wall behind you you have swirled the paint into looking as if the air around your head is agitated your eyes look off in different directions, ear still whole but (which one did you cut off anyway?) your knitted brow gives you your desperate look and the green shadows under and around your right eye and smeared across your left cheek promote your lizard quality while the two reds of your beard hang and drip making me expect to see the drops on your coat that does little more than enclose some of the swirling wall behind you
if i look hard enough the swirls swallow you, your self-assertion slight as the hint of curiosity on the face of a long practicing strumpet
Former U. S. poet laureate, Rita Dove, offers a simple yet powerful tribute to one of America’s heroes, Rosa Parks, who through her act of defiance by simply continuing to occupy a bus seat, became known as the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.”
Introduction with Text of “Rosa”
An Alabama seamstress named Rosa Parks [1] became known the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement.” It all started with a bus ride on December 1, 1955. Rosa had just completed her day’s work at a department store, she was tired, and she headed home.
After boarding a Montgomery city bus, as was her usual routine, she sat down in the front row section of seats in the black section of the bus. It is often misreported that she was asked to leave the front of the bus, but that is not accurate. She was following the laws of segregation and seated herself in the section allowed her race.
As the bus began to fill up, white passengers began seating themselves in the black section, which was, of course, within the law. A white man wanted Rosa’s seat, and so the bus driver commanded Rosa to leave her seat in the front row of the black section and move farther back.
Rosa refused. She was tired from her day’s work. And she was tired of the ridiculous Jim Crow/Black Codes that stifled the lives of black folks. Rosa was arrested for violating the Jim Crow/Black Codes laws. From that point on, the modern Civil Rights movement had begun.
Former poet laureate of the United States (1993-95), Rita Dove, has penned a powerful tribute to Rosa Parks. So simple, yet exquisitely profound, Dove’s elegy describes the quiet yet determined woman, whose uncomplicated act of resistance changed the country’s history in a way that led to a broader fulfillment of the Founding Father’s plan of freedom for all American citizens enshrined in the U. S. Constitution.
Rosa
How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready.
That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat.
Doing nothing was the doing. The clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash.
How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.
Rita Dove explains the genesis of and reads “Rosa”:
In 60 words, this tribute to a genuine hero offers a heartfelt observation of courage and determination that changed a nation’s consciousness.
First Stanza: She Just Sat There
How she sat there, the time right inside a place so wrong it was ready.
The speaker is musing on the actions taken by the “Mother of the Modern-Day Civil Rights Movement” on that fateful day only decades ago—December 1, 1955. The speaker effuses on “how” Rosa “sat there” because that just-sitting-there remains the heart of Parks’ resistance: she just sat there in defiance of a humiliating, immorally legislated mandate that had kept her a second class citizen for most of her life.
Parks was tired from her day’s work, but she was even more tired of mandates that insulted her humanity on a daily basis. She was already sitting in the “colored” section at the back of the bus, and then a white patron wanted her seat.
She would have to move farther back or even stand to accommodate the injustice being leveled against her and her fellow black citizens. But on this day, she just “sat there.” Because of all that had gone on before in terms of the Jim Crow/Black Codes South, it was time to stand up and say “enough.” All the wrong that had been done to black citizens was now “ready” to be righted. Rosa stood up by just sitting there.
Second Stanza: A Sensible Woman
That trim name with its dream of a bench to rest on. Her sensible coat.
The speaker then muses on the simple name “Rosa,” who at the time just wanted a place to sit and rest from her labors. The plain, ordinary things in life should never be beyond the dreams of citizens who simply wish to exercise their civil rights, yet for Rosa and others of her skin tone, those rights had been abridged too long. Her dream was one worth purchasing with some jail time, and she her “trim name” was up to the task.
The speaker then makes the observation that Rosa was wearing a “sensible coat.” She was a sensible woman, an uncomplicated, intelligent, law-abiding woman, and now she needed to rest her weary body that had finished her day’s contribution to the work force.
Third Stanza: Doing Much by Doing Nothing
Doing nothing was the doing. The clean flame of her gaze carved by a camera flash.
The speaker then emphasizes the simplicity of Rosa’s action: she was doing a great service to humanity by “doing nothing.” By forcing the ludicrous law to take her to jail, she was showing how utterly bankrupt the laws had been.
The very description of what happened sounds utterly impossible: a woman arrested for failing to give up her seat on a bus and to a man— aren’t gentlemen supposed to give up their seats for ladies? In the Jim Crow South, however, black women were expected to give up their seats on the bus to both white men and women who demanded it.
With the law on their side, the authorities, including bus drivers, had for decades demanded compliance from both black men and women and had established the precedent that Rosa Parks, a black woman, would be jailed for non-compliance of that insane Jim Crow law.
The speaker of the poem has observed the calm demeanor of the photographs that began to appear in the news outlets of Rosa Parks as the cameras began to flash in her face.
The “clean flame of her gaze” burned through the lenses as they revealed her solemn yet determined demeanor as she was undergoing her ultimate humiliation at the hands of unjust legal maneuvering.
Fourth Stanza: An Act of Courtesy
How she stood up when they bent down to retrieve her purse. That courtesy.
The speaker then recalls how Rosa “stood up,” her purse falling to the floor and someone bending down to pick it up for her. That simple act of human kindness registers on the cosmos of time to show that people are simply people, face to face, and “courtesy” remains as natural as saying some simple greeting like “hello.”
After the elimination of the evil institution of slavery had been accomplished by the bloody Civil War of 1861-1865, a number of Civil Rights Acts had still not been efficacious in restoring full citizenship to America’s black population.
The Jim Crow/Black Codes South had continued to undermine the rights of its black citizens. The straightforward, uncomplicated act of defiance took place at a time when society was finally ready to right wrongs that it had lived with for a century.
Historical Significance of Dove’s Simple Tribute
Rosa Parks’ act of civil disobedience leading to her arrest led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott [2], which began after Jo Ann Robinson sent out 50,000 protest pamphlets, and E. D. Nixon, a labor leader called a meeting of black leaders.
At this meeting, those leaders formed an organization that they called the “Montgomery Improvement Association.” The MIA called for a bus boycott and began negotiation with the bus company to end the segregated sections on the buses.
Despite losing around 40,000 fares daily because of the boycott, the bus company stubbornly tried to keep its Jim Crow laws in effect. But then almost a year later, on November 13, 1956, the Supreme Court ruled those segregation laws unconstitutional, and the bus company finally reluctantly relented and complied.
The boycott resulted in the rise of the modern Civil Right Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been elected president of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), as the charismatic and most effective leader.
The final result was the Civil Right Act of 1964 and the Voting Right Act of 1965, which guaranteed the American black population would finally be recognized as true citizens of their country.
Dove’s uncomplicated, straightforward, 60-word poem, very appropriately offers a clear glimpse at the uncomplicated act of defiance of the woman, who by just sitting there, helped roll out the most significant and efficacious civil rights acts the United States of America had ever experienced. Such a tribute remains a remarkable achievement by the accomplished poet, Rita Dove.
Sources
[1] Editors. “Biography.” The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. Accessed October 13, 2026. [2] Curators. “Montgomery Bus Boycott.” U.S. Department of the Interior: National Park Service. Accessed October 13, 2026.
Video: Rita Dove, “On the Bus with Rosa Parks,” interview:
Image: Robert Frost in 1943. (Eric Schaal/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)
Robert Frost’s “To E. T.”
The speaker in Robert Frost poem, “To E. T.,” expresses his musings about his friendship with a fellow poet, who died serving as a soldier in World War I.
Introduction and Text of “To E. T.”
The initials E. T. are those of Edward Thomas, with whom Robert Frost had formed a close friendship while Frost resided in England. Thomas is likely responsible in no small part for assisting in the launching of Frost’s illustrious career as a poet.
In 1914, Frost published in first collection of poems, North of Boston, and Thomas wrote a glowing review of the book, after which the American audience began to pay serious attention to the works of Frost.
Robert Frost’s poem, “To E. T.,” plays out in five quatrains, each with rime scheme ABCB. In “E.T.,” the speaker’s main focus is on the nature of consciousness after war, especially after experiencing the death of friend who died serving in a war.
Frost had encouraged his friend, Thomas, to relocate to New England, but Thomas chose to serve in World War I, in which he died. That death left Frost with his curious musing about the nature of war consciousness.
To E.T.
I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of you,
I might not have the chance I missed in life Through some delay, and call you to your face First soldier, and then poet, and then both, Who died a soldier-poet of your race.
I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained— And one thing more that was not then to say: The Victory for what it lost and gained.
You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day The war seemed over more for you than me, But now for me than you—the other way.
How over, though, for even me who knew The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, If I was not to speak of it to you And see you pleased once more with words of mine?
Commentary on Robert Frost’s “E. T.”
Robert Frost’s poem “E. T.” offers a moving tribute to Frost’s friend, Edward Thomas.
First Quatrain: Prompting a Dream
I slumbered with your poems on my breast Spread open as I dropped them half-read through Like dove wings on a figure on a tomb To see, if in a dream they brought of you,
The speaker opens his musing by revealing that he had attempted to prompt a dream of his friend by spreading the friend’s poems over his chest as he dropped off to sleep. The poems were spread over the speaker’s chest and resembled the wings of a dove that one sees on tombs. Because the dear friend of the speaker has died, the image works marvelously.
The speaker had revealed that he has only “half-read” through the poems before he dropped them across his body, and he admits that he has spread the poem there with the specific intention of provoking a dream of the friend.
Second Quatrain: What Remains Unspoken
I might not have the chance I missed in life Through some delay, and call you to your face First soldier, and then poet, and then both, Who died a soldier-poet of your race.
The speaker apparently would like to have told his friend that he considered the man both a poet and a soldier. The speaker places those two positions in the odd context of lineage.
He said he would tell to the friend’s face that he was indeed first a soldier, and then a poet. But then he adds “both,” as if to choose one over the other might somehow insult either the friend or either of the two positions.
The speaker then claims that the friend “died a soldier-poet of your race.” So he ends where he begins, in a sense, by placing soldier first in the phrase. By race, the speaker surely means nation. The friend about whom this poem was written is, of course, Edward Thomas, who died serving his country, England, in WWI.
Frost likely used the term “race” so loosely, in order to effect the rime with “face.” (This use of rime is always unseemly, and it happens too often, allowing meaning to take a back seat to rime.)
Third Quatrain: An Unfortunate Omission
I meant, you meant, that nothing should remain Unsaid between us, brother, and this remained— And one thing more that was not then to say: The Victory for what it lost and gained.
In the third quatrain, the speaker reveals that his relationship with the deceased was a close one. They both had intended that nothing between them would ever remain “unsaid.”
He calls his friend “brother” to demonstrate the closeness of their friendship. However, the speaker is sorry that he did not have the chance to say to his friend that he considered him a soldier-poet.
In addition to that unfortunate omission, the speaker realizes that they had not had the opportunity to say exactly what each would have considered “Victory.” The speaker remains somewhat vague about his notion of victory over what, as he just says, “Victory for what is lost and gained.”
The speaker senses that his friend felt that by serving in war, the friend had gained a victory, but the speaker likely wishes he could have discussed that with the friend in order to understand it better.
The speaker knows what he has lost; he has lost his friend, but now he is having difficulty in accepting that loss as a positive instead of negative event in his life, and also in the lives of both men.
Fourth Quatrain: Death and Questions
You went to meet the shell’s embrace of fire On Vimy Ridge; and when you fell that day The war seemed over more for you than me, But now for me than you—the other way.
It was at the Battle of Vimy Ridge that the Canadian Corps demonstrated it ability to fight successfully. Despite great losses, the Canadians came out victorious with the other Allied troops. In this battle, Edward Thomas died, and the speaker in this poem recognizes the fact.
The speaker dramatizes his friends death by metaphorically likening it to meeting an embrace, but this embrace is of “fire” from the shell that took the life of Thomas. When the speaker’s friend “fell that day,” the war was over for his friend, and the speaker says that at the time, it seemed to him that it over more for the dead friend than for himself.
But now it seems the opposite for the speaker. Now it seems that the war is over more the speaker than the friend, likely because the friend will now forever continue to be a casualty of war, which keeps him tied to that event.
Fifth Quatrain: Nature of the Consciousness of War
How over, though, for even me who knew The foe thrust back unsafe beyond the Rhine, If I was not to speak of it to you And see you pleased once more with words of mine?
The speaker continues musing on for whom the war is more over, and he poses a question, rhetorical in nature, wondering how the war can in fact be over more for either of them unless he is able to express that fact in words to his friend.
The speaker inserts into his question the fact that the Battle of Vimy (and the larger Battle of Arras) had sent the Germans packing “beyond the Rhine.” But the speaker remains in a state of quandary from not knowing how the friend would feel about the war effort and also continuing to wonder if the friend would be “pleased once more with words of mine.”
The speaker is obviously referring to the fellow poet-friend’s being pleased with the speaker’s poem. But the speaker also continues to wonder about the friend’s consciousness and how, if he were still living, he would reckon his values with the nature of war and how that reckoning would influence his poetry.
British poet, Edward Thomas, who was killed in the Battle of Arras during World War I, may be most famous for his friendship with American poet, Robert Frost, who penned his important poetic tribute—”To E. T.”— to his friend after the second lieutenant’s becoming a war casualty.
Early Life
Philip Edward Thomas was born in Lambeth, London on March 3, 1878, to Welch parents, Philip Henry Thomas and Mary Elizabeth Thomas. Edward was the oldest of the couple’s six sons [1]. His father entertained a strong interest in the life of the mind and political subjects; thus, he paid little attention to his six sons.
Edward and his father were very different in personality and disagreed on most areas of life; his father disdained Edward’s choice of a literary career. Thomas penned a poem that reveals the tenor of his relationship with his father. He titled the poem simply with his father’s initials [2]:
P.H.T.
I may come near loving you When you are dead And there is nothing to do And much to be said.
To repent that day will be Impossible For you and vain for me The truth to tell.
I shall be sorry for Your impotence: You can do and undo no more When you go hence,
Cannot even forgive The funeral. But not so long as you live Can I love you at all.
Thomas wrote the poem in February of 1916, but it was not published until 1949. Thomas father had remained adamant that his son take up civil service for his career, instead of writing.
Thomas was equally as adamant against that choice for his life’s work. The fact that the father and son had nothing of importance in common results in the animosity on display in Thomas poem addressing his father.
On Becoming a Writer
Edward Thomas attended Battersea Grammar and Saint Paul’s Schools in London; in 1898, he then entered Lincoln College at Oxford and majored in history, graduating in 1900. It was during this time that he determined to become a writer [3].
Thomas did take the civil service examination at his father’s behest. However, because of his intense interest in writing, instead of seeking a civil service position, he began writing essays about his many hikes.
Marriage
In 1899, Thomas married Helen Noble, daughter of James Ashcroft Noble. The couple had three children, Bronwen, Merfyn, and Myfanwy. Soon after the marriage, Thomas was awarded a scholarship to Lincoln College in Oxford, from where he graduated with a history degree.
Thomas became a reviewer for the Daily Chronicle, where he wrote reviews of nature books, literary criticism, and current poetry. Thomas’ earnings were meager at that time, and the family relocated five time in the span of ten years.
Suffering Depression
In 1896, through the influence and encouragement of James Ashcroft Noble, a successful literary journalist and who became Thomas’ father-in-law three years later, Thomas published his first book of essays titled The Woodland Life.
He had also enjoyed many holidays in Wales. With his literary friend, Richard Jefferies, Thomas had spent a great deal of time hiking and exploring the landscape in Wales, where he accumulated material for his nature writings.
Thomas wrote and published several significant biographies and critical studies, which include biographies of the important writers and critics such as Richard Jefferies (1909), Maurice Maeterlinck (1911), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1912), and Walter Pater (1913).
Despite his success in writing critical works, Thomas’ health suffered as he brooded over his financial situation and his lack of opportunity to engage in more creative writing efforts.
Because of his friendships with women writers such Eleanor Farjeon, along with his brooding melancholy, his marriage began to suffer. In 1913, he relocated his family to Steep Village, where he took up autobiographical writing and other writings of a more creative nature. He then produced his most famous works.
The move to Steep Village also had a healthful influence on Thomas. In Steep Village, Thomas began writing his more creative works, including Childhood, The Icknield Way (1913), The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913), and In Pursuit of Spring (1914). It was also during this period that Thomas met Robert Frost, and their fast friendship began.
Frost and Thomas, who both were at very early points in their writing careers, would take long walks through the countryside and attend the local writers meetings. About their friendship, Frost later quipped, “I never had, I never shall have another such year of friendship.”
In 1914, Edward Thomas helped launch Frost’s career by writing a glowing review of Frost’s first collection of poems, North of Boston. Frost encouraged Thomas to write poetry, and Thomas composed his blank-verse poem, “Up the Wind,” which Thomas published under the pen-name, “Edward Eastaway.”
Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” was inspired by Thomas’ dissatisfaction with their path choices during their nature hikes. About the poem, Frost explained to Thomas: “No matter which road you take, you’ll always sigh, and wish you’d taken another.” Frost treasured his relationship with Thomas, writing that “Edward Thomas was the only brother I ever had.”
War and Death
Edward Thomas continued to write more poetry, but with the onset of World War I, the literary market took a down-turn. Thomas considered relocating his family to Frost’s New England. But at the same time he was also considering whether to become a soldier.
Frost encouraged him to move to New England, but Thomas chose to join the army. In a letter, dated August 30, 1914, to Walter de la Mare, Thomas wrote: “If the war goes on I believe I shall find myself a sort of Englishman, though neither poet or soldier” [4].
In 1915, Thomas signed up with the Artists’ Rifles, a regiment of the British Army Reserve [5]. As a Lance Corporal, Thomas became an instructor to fellow officers, which included Wilfred Owen, the poet most noted for his melancholy war verse.
Thomas took up training as an Officer Cadet with the Royal Garrison Artillery service in September 1916. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in November, he deployed to northern France. On April 9, 1917, Thomas was killed in the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the first of the larger Battle of Arras. He is buried in the Agny Military Cemetery.
Sources
[1] Editors. “Edward Thomas.” Academy of American Poets. Accessed October 12, 2026. [2] Edward Thomas. “P.H.T.” Special Collections and Archive. Accessed October 12, 2026. [3] William Green. “Biography of Edward Thomas.” Poem Analysis. Accessed October 12, 2026. [4] Katharine Lindsay. “Edward Thomas Biography.” University of Oxford. Accessed October 12, 2026. [5] Matthew Hollis. “Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, and the Road to War.” The Guardian. July 29, 2011.
a study of brown, even the sun is ringed with brown, the brown hills, the brown wheat, and a brown reaper. you run your finger over the mounds and stiffen at the thought of a woman’s breasts, you say, these look like a well-fed woman’s breasts, and I think but do not say: and the brown-ringed sun looks like a cum-stain left on yellow sheets by a careless dripping lover and what else can I say? nothing to you. for if I did you would not answer, so I hold forth to Vincent, who tortured these worlds into existence, and I torture myself with phantoms, and although you won’t be with me, in this brown October, I can see us walking those hills, I can see the brown-ringed sun dripping its chipped rays on our silence.
The speaker in the Spoon River epitaph series titled “The Circuit Judge” indicts the legal system, using himself as a symbol. The judge is actually judging his own life.
Introduction and Text of “The Circuit Judge”
In Edgar Lee Masters’ “The Circuit Judge” from Masters’ American classic Spoon River Anthology, the speaker is a circuit judge who judges himself rather harshly. While he remains indignant that the weather has etched little notches in his tombstone, in the end, he seems to deserve every indignity he might have suffered in life and now in death.
This judge sentenced the character “Hod Putt” to death, and Putt then died by hanging. But the judge’s final judgment about his own character is shocking as it reveals the hell to which the judge seems to be condemning himself and his profession.
The Circuit Judge
Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain— Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred Were marking scores against me, But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory. I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches, Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, Not on the right of the matter. O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone! For worse than the anger of the wronged, The curses of the poor, Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, Hanged by my sentence, Was innocent in soul compared with me.
Commentary on “The Circuit Judge”
The speaker in the Spoon River epitaph series titled “The Circuit Judge” makes a clear indictment of the legal system as symbolized by the judge as he judges his own life.
First Movement: Pointing out Flaws
Take note, passers-by, of the sharp erosions
Eaten in my head-stone by the wind and rain—
The circuit judge begins his testimony by commanding his listeners and readers to observe that his tombstone has been etched with “sharp erosions.” These etchings have been colorfully “eaten” into his marker by the “wind” and “rain.”
The judge immediately identifies his complaint as one that will include all of nature conspiring against him. Even the wind and rain have joined in the battle against this man by carving little “erosion” into the very stone that will give the judge his final presence.
Second Movement: A Destructive Conspiracy
Almost as if an intangible Nemesis or hatred Were marking scores against me, But to destroy, and not preserve, my memory.
The judge’s complaint then begins to describe what he feels is the conspiracy to “destroy” his memory. While etchings in tombstones are placed to “preserve” the memory of the deceased, these eroded markings made by the elements function to obliterate the judge’s memory.
The judge likens the fact of the etchings to the work of an “intangible Nemesis” which is marking “scores” against the judge. This Nemesis can also be thought of as simple “hatred” against the men.
Third Movement: Passing the Buck
I in life was the Circuit Judge, a maker of notches, Deciding cases on the points the lawyers scored, Not on the right of the matter.
The speaker then reports the while living he served as the “Circuit Judge.” He states that his function was to make notches. But instead of deciding cases on their merits, he had to judge them from the presented “points” that the “lawyers scored” as they argued before this bench.
The judge is beginning to pass the buck when he whines that he had to judge cases based on the argument of the lawyers instead of what was “right” in each case.
The judge is implying that he would have preferred to judge differently from what he did. He would have preferred to judge by the “right of the matter.” With this complaint the judge is implying that the law and the lawyers were corrupt, and he was merely an innocent victim sucked into the quagmire of corruption.
Fourth Movement: Commanding the Weather
O wind and rain, leave my head-stone alone!
The speaker, however, remains fairly vague about his complaint, offering no example of corrupt law or lawyers who argued without merit. But then the judge yells out to the wind and rain, demanding that they cease carving their marks into his headstone.
Instead of confronting any living human being who might have been responsible for passing poor laws or addressing any of the lawyers who argued them, the judge rails at the natural elements of wind and rain. Knowing that these elements will not choose to refute his claims, the judge feels safe in demanding that the wind and rain leave his tombstone in peace.
Fifth Movement: Injustices from the Bench
For worse than the anger of the wronged, The curses of the poor, Was to lie speechless, yet with vision clear, Seeing that even Hod Putt, the murderer, Hanged by my sentence, Was innocent in soul compared with me.
The speaker then makes his odd conclusion: he shows that because of his judicial decisions, he has suffered “the anger of the wronged.” He has also had to live with “curses of the poor.” But as bad as these indignities have been, it is far worse that he now has to lie in his grave where he cannot speak out against those indignities.
Yet, the judge then makes a stunning confession. He claims that even the murderer, Hod Putt, whom the judge condemned to death by hanging, was a more innocent soul than the judge himself.
If the judge is more culpable then a murderer whom the judge had sentenced to hang, then it must be assumed that he caused many deaths and a multitude of other injustices from the bench.
The last summer holiday. we get off school so we decide to take peanut butter sandwiches and raspberry tea and go sit and talk and eat under the mulberry tree and study The Mulberry Tree. you observe the painted tree is deeper into fall than we. I watch your mouth, your lips, I know those lips — leaves flare like fire — how they taste and cushion my tongue. the soft yellow grass, scraps of green, green hangs on as long as it can — how your tongue torches thigh. ‘here’s a bush, red like yours,’ you say, and I blush. you eat so clean, and tear me off a piece. your fingers touch my lips, my greedy tongue licks the tips, and you draw them to your mouth and lick where I licked. I pour tea, hot, honey-sweet, raspberry. we sip, and mark the sky, ‘the black strokes are no mistake,’ you say, ‘Vincent was still perfecting his technique, but he worried,’ and I say, ‘I think his worries tortured his art, don’t you think so?’ and you say, ‘probably so.’ you ask me if my worries torture my poems, but I need not reply . . . for the phantasm has vanished and I am caught again fondling my memory of your lips and tongue, my fingers stroking only a print.
The wildly famous show tune “Memory” by Andrew Lloyd Webber was inspired by T. S. Eliot’s “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” and “Preludes.” This article focuses on the former, which features a speaker whose rant exemplifies the very definition of a lunatic.
Introduction with Text of “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”
The speaker of T. S. Eliot’s “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” goes for a four-hour walk beginning at midnight in an undisclosed city. The poem consists of 78 lines contained in eight versagraphs. Rime is sporadic as is rhythm, and the theme is the mocking desecration of the city coupled with a drunken fantasy.
Although T. S. Eliot’s works have been taken as deeply serious social commentaries on society going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket, it is seldom pointed out that he did so with an often belly-laughable humor. That humor appears raucously in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and as well, it appears here in “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” a seemingly straight-faced piece.
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Twelve o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, “Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.”
The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap.
Half-past two, The street lamp said, “Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter.” So the hand of a child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child’s eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed: “Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain.” The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars.”
The lamp said, “Four o’clock, Here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair, Mount. The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The last twist of the knife.
Reading by Jeremy Irons
Commentary on “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”
The speaker turns a four-hour walk into a social commentary through grotesque images, loopy sporadic rime, and hints of societal degradation being ushered in by the postmodernist mindset.
First Versagraph: Describing the Sights of the City
Twelve o’clock. Along the reaches of the street Held in a lunar synthesis, Whispering lunar incantations Dissolve the floors of memory And all its clear relations, Its divisions and precisions, Every street lamp that I pass Beats like a fatalistic drum, And through the spaces of the dark Midnight shakes the memory As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
In the first versagraph, the speaker reports that it is “Twelve o’clock.” He then begins to dramatize his walk through the streets, describing what he sees: he asserts that the moon is encasing the streetscape, as it provides a kind of canvas on which to write his social commentary.
The “lunar synthesis” is the important backdrop for the streetscape. The moon with its chant-like iterations causes the speaker’s memory to disappear like sugar in water. The speaker is finding his ability to remember where he is a bit difficult; at this point, the reader might suspect that the speaker is considerably inebriated.
The drunken portrayal of the street lamps offers further evidence that the speaker is possibly so drunk that his thoughts and memories are misaligned because he states that each “street lamp” by which he stumbles seems to be beating like a “fatalistic drum.”
It is likely that it is the speaker’s head that is beating like that deadly persuasion instrument. The speaker then offers the hilarious image: he concocts a deranged fellow shaking a “dead geranium” and likens that preposterous image to his own memory being shaken by midnight because of the dark spaces which that time of day features.
He is finding that his memory as well as his drunken status are making it difficult for him to maneuver through the midnight streets. The speaker is implying that only through a drunken stupor could a sane individual find the courage and wherewithal to try to navigate the filth through which he must move.
Second Versagraph: Sporadic Rhythm and Rime
Half-past one, The street lamp sputtered, The street lamp muttered, The street lamp said, “Regard that woman Who hesitates towards you in the light of the door Which opens on her like a grin. You see the border of her dress Is torn and stained with sand, And you see the corner of her eye Twists like a crooked pin.”
By the second versagraph, the speaker has been walking for an hour and half. The reader is treated to one of the sporadic rimes that pop up occasionally: “The street lamp sputtered, / The street lamp muttered.”
The speaker encounters another person out walking, and the street lamp tells him to look at her. She is undoubtedly a prostitute whose “dress / Is torn and stained with sand.”
The speaker’s mind again is strangely interpreting things as he sees “the corner of her eye / Twists like a crooked pin.” But then it is the street lamp that says all this, so one cannot place all the blame on the speaker for reporting such gibberish.
It should be noted that T. S. Eliot was writing at the edge of postmodern gibberish, and thus he did not shy away from taking advantage of the latitude that was being offered up by that reckless and disingenuous style. The important difference between Eliot and the postmods is that Eliot had an genuine point of view and the skill with which to express it.
Third Versagraph: Twisted Things
The memory throws up high and dry A crowd of twisted things; A twisted branch upon the beach Eaten smooth, and polished As if the world gave up The secret of its skeleton, Stiff and white. A broken spring in a factory yard, Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left Hard and curled and ready to snap.
The third versagraph merely reports that his memory is vomiting a bunch of things that are twisted, things that are also “high and dry.” He offers examples of those twisted things, such as “a twisted branch upon the beach.” This line alerts the reader that the speaker is walking in a coastal city.
The speaker also notes that the twisted branch appears to be stripped so smooth that it reminds him of a skeleton, “still and white.” He then marks a rusty “spring” in a “factory yard” which has been abandoned and which is likely dangerous because it appears to have hardened, and now it is “curled and ready to snap.”
A kid or any person walking by that loaded spring could become a victim akin to a stabbing. The speaker places that possibility in the mind of readers for special effect to remind them that he is describing a degraded landscape that has the ability to take victims in unexpected places.
Fourth Versagraph: Keeping Track of Time
Half-past two, The street lamp said, “Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter, Slips out its tongue And devours a morsel of rancid butter.” So the hand of a child, automatic, Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay. I could see nothing behind that child’s eye. I have seen eyes in the street Trying to peer through lighted shutters, And a crab one afternoon in a pool, An old crab with barnacles on his back, Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
It is now “Half-past two.” The street lamp is talking again; this time it is reporting that a cat is in a gutter eating butter—an image that is offering up another sporadic rime. Then the speaker likens the cat’s tongue lurching out to grab the butter to a street urchin grabbing a toy as he ran “along the quay.”
The speaker describes the child’s eye as holding “nothing”—a very disturbing image that again adds to his description of degradation and poverty that continue to flood the landscape—especially the streetscape. The speaker then continues his report about empty eyes that he has seen before. He has seen such blank stares through “lighted shutters.”
Then he is ready to add another ridiculous image to his repertoire: he has observed an “old crab with barnacles on his back” and that old crab was grabbing the “end of a stick” that the speaker was holding out for him.
Fifth and Sixth Versagraphs: The Lamp Rimes Again and Speaks French
Half-past three, The lamp sputtered, The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed: “Regard the moon, La lune ne garde aucune rancune, She winks a feeble eye, She smiles into corners. She smoothes the hair of the grass. The moon has lost her memory. A washed-out smallpox cracks her face, Her hand twists a paper rose, That smells of dust and old Cologne, She is alone With all the old nocturnal smells That cross and cross across her brain.” The reminiscence comes Of sunless dry geraniums And dust in crevices, Smells of chestnuts in the streets, And female smells in shuttered rooms, And cigarettes in corridors And cocktail smells in bars.”
The street lamp again offers the opportunity for a sporadic rime, again it is “sputtered” and then “muttered” as the dark continues to remain ascendent. But now the street lamp begins to speak French as it describes the moon, telling the speaker, “La lune ne garde aucune rancune”: the moon never holds a grudge.
The moon lights the corners of memory, as she performs a number of operations such as winking a “feeble eye,” soothing the “hair of the grass,” offering up the image of a “smallpox” scar across her face.
The speaker continues to lend the moon an array of odd activities, such as twisting “a paper rose” and exuding the smell of “dust and old Cologne.” He claims that it is only the moon that arouses these strange smells of the night. It is the speaker’s own drunken memory that is responsible for the concoction of these odd smells along with all of the other images he is creating.
Across the brain of the moon, he claims, come these smells that vary: “sunless dry geraniums,” dust in tight places, “chestnuts in the streets,” “female smells” in closed rooms, “cigarette” in hallways, and “cocktail smell in bars.”
And interestingly, even though the “moon has lost her memory,” the speaker remembers quite well all of these grotesque smells he has experienced—all of these grotesque smells that the power of the moonlight has brought to the forefront for the speaker, as he walks along the polluted streets of this polluted city.
The term “lunatic” etymologically descends from the Latin “luna” moon; the original definition of “lunatic” described individuals who were adversely affected the phases of the moon.
This speaker’s outlandish images are influenced by the moonlight and the moon’s memory, a perfectly useful symbol for the speaker’s commentary on a spiritually dry and deplorable society.
Seventh and Eight Versagraphs: Back at the Flat, as the Knife-Key Turns
The lamp said, “Four o’clock, Here is the number on the door. Memory! You have the key, The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair, Mount. The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall, Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The last twist of the knife.
It is now four o’clock in the morning and the speaker has arrived at presumably his flat. And again, the lamp is doing the speaking telling the speaker that the number he is seeing and remembering is, in fact, his. The speaker holds the key, which becomes a knife, as he finishes his dramatic reportage with a flourish.
The speaker’s final thrust, appearing in the eighth versagraph, which is bizarrely and postmodernly the single line “The last twist of the knife,” rimes with the preceding line from the seventh versagraph, “Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.”
The speaker’s whole midnight walk has consisted of nothing but metaphorical knife thrusts from the moon lighting up a decaying streetscape, to a cat lapping up rancid butter, to a prostitute’s eye twisting like “a crooked pin,” to a child’s blank expression, to all those rancid smells that have accosted him.
It is, however, his own memory that has brought all of this dissatisfaction and deadening spiritual dryness to the forefront of his thoughts. Thus, it is hardly surprising that his final notion of sleeping and then starting life over again come morning should be nothing but another “twist of the knife.”
