27 Quotes by Edward Thomas

The fairest things have fleetest end,/ Their scent survives their close:/ But the rose's scent is bitterness/ To him that loved the rose!

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

November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths.... Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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