Brian Bilston is a clever versifier but hardly a great poet. And neither is Edward Thomas a great poet. He is generally regarded as a minor poet of the Edwardian era, somewhat eclipsed by contemporaries such as Robert Frost and Wilfred Owen.Literary evaluation is of course subjective, but as an example of great poetry I would propose ‘To Autumn’ by Keats:‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run,To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees;And fill Al fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel;; to set budding more,And still more later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may findThee sitting careless on a granary floor,They hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hookSpares the next swath and all its twisted flowers;And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keepSteady thy laden head across a brook;Or by a cider-press, with patient look,Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.Where are the songs of Spring. Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -While barred clouds bloom the soft dying day,And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mournAmong the river sallows, borne aloftOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble softThe red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.’
Steven Rose ● 18d