Edward Thomas Quotes

#1. If he [Pound] is not careful he will take to meaning what he says instead of saying what he means.

Edward Thomas

#2. How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.

Edward Thomas

#3. I, too, often shrivel the grey shreds,Sniff them and think and sniff again and tryOnce more to think what it is I am remembering,Always in vain. I cannot like the scent,Yet I would rather give up others more sweet,With no meaning, than this bitter one.

Edward Thomas

#4. You English words?
I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer

Edward Thomas

#5. The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet.

Edward Thomas

#6. And I rose up, and knew that I was tired, and continued my journey

Edward Thomas

#7. I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the grave, and her grass to cover it pitifully up, adding flowers - as an unknown hand added them to the grave of Nero.

Edward Thomas

#8. Yes; I remember Adlestrop- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June.

Edward Thomas

#9. Over the land freckled with snow half-thawed
The speculating rooks at their nests cawed
And saw from elm tops, delicate as flower of grass,
What we below could not see, Winter pass.

Edward Thomas

#10. Making war or rebellion is messy, like eating soup off a knife.

Edward Thomas

#11. You cannot make chicken salad out of Chicken shit.

Edward Thomas

#12. If I should ever by chance grow richI'll buy Codham, Cockridden, and Childerditch,Roses, Pyrgo, and Lapwater,And let them all to my eldest daughter.

Edward Thomas

#13. I built myself a house of glass:It took me years to make it:And I was proud. But now, alas!Would God someone would break it.

Edward Thomas

#14. The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

Edward Thomas

#15. The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.

Edward Thomas

#16. Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds'
The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904

Edward Thomas

#17. A merely great intellect can produce prose, but not poetry, not one line.

Edward Thomas