A/AS LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE
But these things also
By Edward Thomas
But these things also are Spring's - *for a brief moment in time the two
On banks by the roadside the grass seasons co-exist and thus can rightly
Long-dead that is greyer now claim ownership of the surroundings
Than all the Winter it was;
The shell of a little snail bleached
In the grass; chip of flint, and mite *lexical field of ‘smallness’
Of chalk; and the small birds' dung and ‘whiteness’
In splashes of purest white:
All the white things a man mistakes
For earliest violets
Who seeks through Winter's ruins
Something to pay Winter's debts,
While the North blows, and starling flocks *North wind is associated
By chattering on and on with colder weather
Keep their spirits up in the mist,
And Spring's here, Winter's not gone. *for a moment in time
the two seasons co-exist
Edward Thomas once wrote that ‘Anything, however small, may make a poem; nothing,
however great, is certain to’.
‘But these things also’ offers the reader an accumulation of tiny details which are all
affiliated with the advent of Spring:
But these things also
By Edward Thomas
But these things also are Spring's - *for a brief moment in time the two
On banks by the roadside the grass seasons co-exist and thus can rightly
Long-dead that is greyer now claim ownership of the surroundings
Than all the Winter it was;
The shell of a little snail bleached
In the grass; chip of flint, and mite *lexical field of ‘smallness’
Of chalk; and the small birds' dung and ‘whiteness’
In splashes of purest white:
All the white things a man mistakes
For earliest violets
Who seeks through Winter's ruins
Something to pay Winter's debts,
While the North blows, and starling flocks *North wind is associated
By chattering on and on with colder weather
Keep their spirits up in the mist,
And Spring's here, Winter's not gone. *for a moment in time
the two seasons co-exist
Edward Thomas once wrote that ‘Anything, however small, may make a poem; nothing,
however great, is certain to’.
‘But these things also’ offers the reader an accumulation of tiny details which are all
affiliated with the advent of Spring:
