Edward Thomas

So, we have reached the final poet of the Dymock group. This one apparently was the last to actually start writing poetry, in 1914, partly due to the war (which eventually led him to his death) and due to his discussions with Frost, his now close friend. Thus, I have chosen a poem which can be read either with or without the war context, as it is called,

LIBERTY
The last light has gone out of the world, except
This moonlight lying on the grass like frost
Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow.
It is as if everything else had slept
Many an age, unforgotten and lost --
The men that were, the things done, long ago,
All I have thought; and but the moon and I
Live yet and here stand idle over a grave
Where all is buried. Both have liberty
To dream what we could do if we were free
To do some thing we had desired long,
The moon and I. There's none less free than who
Does nothing and has nothing else to do,
Being free only for what is not to his mind,
And nothing is to his mind. If every hour
Like this one passing that I have spent among
The wiser others when I have forgot
To wonder whether I was free or not,
Were piled before me, and not lost behind,
And I could take and carry them away
I should be rich; or if I had the power
To wipe out every one and not again
Regret, I should be rich to be so poor.
And yet I still am half in love with pain,
With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth,
With things that have an end, with life and earth,
And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.

It is rather an eerie thought, to imagine oneself as the only person on the planet, or for time to have stopped and only you left in motion. Thus, Thomas takes the warmth from the envisioned place in the poem, by providing the cold moonlight over the sun, and likening it to 'frost'. I am reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles at the minute, and this scene reminds me of when Tess wishes to become one with the forest and seclude herself from human relations, at liberty to have no responsibility in the world.

The 'things done long ago' interest me. It is hard to comprehend, sometimes, that past ages have really occurred, that regimes and empires have really fallen, making one feel rather insignificant, a complete contrast to the absolute significance of being the only person alive.

Yet the narrator is not entirely alone, as the moon is personified as a companion, watching on as he contemplates life, linking to the stationary trees we covered before; neither can move to enact their desires, which makes man lucky. The fact that we can perceive the difference between good and bad, depicted in the final four lines, adds to our fortune, whether we always remember that in the bad times or not.