et in arcadia ego

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I’ve always been interested in what life may have been like in England before the carnage of WW1 and how that most terrible of wars impacted upon people all over these British Isles. These two poems provide, in their different ways, a tiny glimpse into that lost world of innocence, before the pain began of fractured families and broken hearts.

Adlestrop is based on a railway journey Thomas took on 24 June 1914, during which his train briefly stopped at the Gloucestershire village of Adelstrop.

Thomas enlisted the following year, and was killed in 1917, just before the poem was due to be printed in his collection Poems.

Adlestrop

BY 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.