A Nice Poem I Heard This Weekend

watching a BBC documentary about trains in literature and movies, i heard this poem recited

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was an Anglo-Welsh writer of prose and poetry. He is commonly considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. Already an accomplished writer, Thomas turned to poetry only in 1914. He enlisted in the army in 1915, and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.



Adlestrop
Edward Thomas

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 the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.



Peter Ashley, the editor of Railway Rhymes, an Everyman collection of poems celebrating the railway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Thomas_%28poet%29