EDWARD THOMAS'S BIRDS
BIRDS AND THE POEMS
When I commissioned Yvonne Scargon to produce wood engravings to illustrate six of my grandfather's poems I had no idea that of the six I had selected no fewer than five feature birds - and these appear in the illustrations.
I was so surprised that | wrote to my aunt, Myfanwy, to ask if this was merely a coincidence. Her speedy reply says it all:"_ . . . and interesting about the birds, too. Yes, come to think of it. without the book I can think of a wren (Fifty faggots), reed-warblers, cuckoo, another owl, rooks, pigeons. swifts, not forgetting blackbirds together with all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire!- there must be swallows some- where, definitely thrushes- those'll do for starters!"
My enthusiasm for further research was spurred on by her response and given fresh impetus by discussion on the subject at the Oxford Seminar in November, and so I got out my Collected Poems and did some counting. The results arc fascinating.
Birds feature in 70 of the 142 poems. No fewer than 42 different species appear. and in this count [ have coupled seagull with gull. missel-thrush with thrush. cock with chanticleer. dove with ring-dove. jackdaw with daw and skylark with lark. Among the unusual titles are hern for heron, and nettle-creeper for whitethroat.
His favourite bird in terms of poetical appearance is the thrush which features in 13 poems, closely followed by the blackbird in ten, the nightingale in seven, and the lark, cuckoo and starling in six A bird's name appears no less than 160 times in the poems.
We shall never know why birds are so prominent in the poems but they are a major feature of the country scene and he uses them widely to sat moods and scenes. Some of his descriptions of birds cannot be bettered:- ~ . . . .a magpie veering about, /A magpie like a weathercock in doubt." (House and Man)
"Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats /Making a spiky beard as they chattered /And whistled and kissed, with heads in air, /Till they thought of something else that mattered." (/he Barn).
~ Not like a peewit that returns to wail /For something it has lost, but like a dove /That slants unswerving to its home and love." (Beauty)
"Jackdaws began to shout and float and soar" (Ambition).
"Fields where plough-horses stcam and plovers /Fling and whimper." (Merfyn).
"The swifl with wings as sharp and narrow As if the bow had flown off with the arrow" (/favmaking).
Two of my favourite stanzas in which my grandfather used birds to heighten the sense of mood are in Sowing and in Digging:
"I tasted deep the hour /Between the far 'Owl's chuckling first soft cry 'And the first star." and "It is enough /To smell. to crumble the dark earth /While the robin sings again /Sad songs of Autumn mirth."
Both poems are included in the set of six notelets beautifully illustrated by Yvonne Scargon.
BIRDS-Newsletter 30 January 1994.pdf.png
Newsletter 30 January 1994.pdf