Adlestrop by Edward Thomas

This poem is based on a journey by railway taken by the author on June 24, 1914, during which his train stopped briefly at a now-closed station in the village of Adlestrop.  Edward Thomas enlisted as a solider in World War I the following year, and was killed in 1917, shortly before this work was scheduled to be printed in his collection, ‘Poems.’  It was also published in the New Statesman three weeks following the author’s death.

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.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.