Edward Thomas: Birdsong

I had just learned of Edward Thomas a few years ago, thanks to Stephen Pentz, at his blog, First Known When Lost  (see sidebar for link).  Consequently I knew little of him except for his poetry.  According to the brief biography, he was already known for his many fine essays, critiques, and writings in natural history, when he met Robert Frost in 1914 who encouraged Thomas to write poetry.  Thomas took his advice and had produced many fine poems when, unfortunately, he was killed in action in WWI in 1917.

Therefore, I was surprised to find him in Nature Writing: The English Tradition, another of the unexpected authors in that anthology whom I had known from other genres.  The following comes from the excerpt found in that anthology, and I can see why Frost had encouraged him to write poetry.


"At the lower margin of the wood the overhanging branches form blue caves, and out of these emerge the songs of many hidden birds.  I know that there are bland melodious blackbirds of easy musing voices, robins whose earnest song, though full of passion, is but a fragment that has burst through a more passionate silence, hedge-sparrows of liquid confiding monotone, brisk acid wrens, chaffinches and yellowhammers saying always the same thing ( a dear but courtly praise of the coming season), larks building spires above spires into the sky, thrushes of infinite variety that talk and talk of a thousand things, never thinking, always talking of the moment, exclaiming, scolding, cheering, flattering, coaxing, challenging, with merry-hearted, bold voices that must have been the same in the morning of the world when the forest trees lay, or leaned, or hung, where they fell.  Yet I can distinguish neither blackbird, nor robin, nor hedge-sparrow, nor any one voice.  All are blent into one seething stream of song.  It is one song, not many.  It is the spirit that sings.  Mixed with them is the myriad stir of unborn things, of leaf and blade and flower, many silences of heart and root of tree, voices of hope and growth, of love that will be satisfied though it leap upon the swords of life." 

Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
"Hampshire"
from The South Country
Excerpt comes from Nature Writing, edited by Robert Finch and John Elder 


What do you think?  Is there something "poetic" about the above excerpt?  Was Frost being perceptive?

Nature Writing: The Tradition in English

Robert Finch and John Elder, Editors
Nature Writing:  The Tradition in English
1100+ pages
131 authors and 157 selections

I came across this by chance while browsing the local library catalog.  It's actually the second edition.  The first edition was titled The Norton Book of Nature Writing and was published in 1990.  This is an expanded version which was published in 2002.  It's a large volume, as you can see, and unfortunately there are eight holds on the only copy the local library possesses.  My plan is to read it until I have to return it and then immediately put it on hold again, and hope I will see it again sometime this year. As there is only one copy, there's a good chance it will go "missing."

The range of authors is extensive, beginning with the Englishman Gilbert White (1729--1793) and ending with Janisse Ray  (b. 1962) of the United States.  The selections by Gilbert White were first published in 1789 while the selection by Janisse Ray came out in 1999, which is about right since this volume was published in 2002.

Many of the names are familiar:  Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch (two of my favorite all-time writers), John James Audubon, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, N. Scott Momaday,  and Edward Abbey are among those I thought might be included.  However, there were others whose names I recognized, but I didn't expect them to be in here as I was familiar with them from other genres.

I wasn't aware of the prose works of the following poets:  Edward Thomas, Walt Whitman, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.  I was surprised to find a number of contributors whom I know through their fictional works: W. H. Hudson, Virginia Woolf, Isak Dinesen, D. H. Lawrence, Vladimir Nabokov, John Fowles, Ursula K. Le Guin, and John Steinbeck, as well as a number of others.  In addition, there are some whose names I have run across but have yet to read anything by them, or if I have, it is lost:  Aldo Leopard, Ernest Thompson Seton, Edwin Way Teale, Peter Matthiessen, and Barry Lopez are among those I'm looking forward to getting at least a brief exposure to their works.

For the most part though, a  majority of the names are unfamiliar, so this will a two-fold exploratory expedition.  First, I will be exploring a variety of subjects covered in the selections, and second, I will be exploring the world of nature writing, or what used to be called natural history, if I'm not mistaken.

Even though my TBR list is impossibly long right now, I expect to add a few more names.  One will be Aldo Leopold whose excerpt from A Sand County Almanac interested me.


Well, I'm now at page 416 and the book is due today,  March 16.  Eight people are waiting for this the only copy.  I will return it and go back on the waiting list and expect to see it again in five or six months, if it doesn't go "missing" before then.