In Memoriam (Easter, 1915)
By Edward Thomas
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.
The manuscript of Edward Thomas's 'In Memoriam [Easter 1915]' reveals that this
sophisticated four-line poem has been given its elaborate title by an editor at a later
date. '6.IV.15', by comparison, is suitably bare, suitably unembellished, and it seems
appropriate for a poem which withholds more than it explicitly voices. Critics have
scrutinised the phrase 'call into mind', which may be metrically essential but only at
the expense of the more natural and idiomatic 'call to mind'. Notwithstanding this, the
poem is a masterpiece. Its brevity conveys the nonsensical nature of war. There are
no words that can justify or explain the futile loss of young lives. This poem laments
the loss of these young men in the Great War.
The use of the Easter setting makes the loss all the more poignant as Easter is a
time of renewal and new life and in the Biblical sense it is a time of the Death of
Christ and his subsequent resurrection. For these fallen men however there will be
no resurrection.
The poem moves from the abundance of nature “The flowers left thick” to dearth
and absence i.e.the absent men, so that paradoxically it speaks of the loss of life
through nature's surfeit. Nature is representative of the natural and normal order of
things and thus the speaker is telling us that human life should be flourishing as the
flowers do. War is thus unnatural.
Those men are 'far from home' because they are close to death, not just
geographically ‘far from home’. They are either already deceased, or they will soon
be dead: they shall not be coming back. The literary technique through the use of
syntax further emphasises the inevitable demise of these men use of syntax;
Thomas anastrophically delays the negative --- 'and will do never again' instead of
the more customary 'and will never do again' --- the poem taunts by briefly imagining
a replenished future ('and will do'), only to eradicate that potential with emphatic
imminence.
By Edward Thomas
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.
The manuscript of Edward Thomas's 'In Memoriam [Easter 1915]' reveals that this
sophisticated four-line poem has been given its elaborate title by an editor at a later
date. '6.IV.15', by comparison, is suitably bare, suitably unembellished, and it seems
appropriate for a poem which withholds more than it explicitly voices. Critics have
scrutinised the phrase 'call into mind', which may be metrically essential but only at
the expense of the more natural and idiomatic 'call to mind'. Notwithstanding this, the
poem is a masterpiece. Its brevity conveys the nonsensical nature of war. There are
no words that can justify or explain the futile loss of young lives. This poem laments
the loss of these young men in the Great War.
The use of the Easter setting makes the loss all the more poignant as Easter is a
time of renewal and new life and in the Biblical sense it is a time of the Death of
Christ and his subsequent resurrection. For these fallen men however there will be
no resurrection.
The poem moves from the abundance of nature “The flowers left thick” to dearth
and absence i.e.the absent men, so that paradoxically it speaks of the loss of life
through nature's surfeit. Nature is representative of the natural and normal order of
things and thus the speaker is telling us that human life should be flourishing as the
flowers do. War is thus unnatural.
Those men are 'far from home' because they are close to death, not just
geographically ‘far from home’. They are either already deceased, or they will soon
be dead: they shall not be coming back. The literary technique through the use of
syntax further emphasises the inevitable demise of these men use of syntax;
Thomas anastrophically delays the negative --- 'and will do never again' instead of
the more customary 'and will never do again' --- the poem taunts by briefly imagining
a replenished future ('and will do'), only to eradicate that potential with emphatic
imminence.
