Adlestrop Edward Thomas (1878 - 1917)
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.
To appreciate a poem, it is necessary to have a good dictionary on hand. I recommend the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and The Penguin English Dictionary. Both contain a large stock of words, usage labels, and the history of many words.
First, find out the meaning of the words that are not familiar to you. For me, in the poem Aldestrop (pronounced like “AD-dle-strop” with stress on the first syllable), they are “unwonted” – unaccustomed or unusual, “unwontedly” – adverb; “haycocks” – conical heaps of hay in a field; “whit’ – a very small part or amount, “not a whit” or “no whit” -- not at all; “fair” – to a high degree. “Meadowsweet” we can tell is grass or a plant. Guess at the meaning of other words from their contexts, using clues like what is said before and after, parallel and other structures, and groups of words belonging to the same field. Spotting words of the same kind and guessing at their meaning is a very useful ability. We do not have to know the exact meaning of “meadowsweet, ” “willow-herb,” or “haycocks,” the word-parts “meadow-,“ “willow-,“ and “hay-“ are sufficiently indicative.
The next step is to figure out the context or situation. Who is speaking? Who is he speaking to? What are the circumstances? Here, the speaker is answering someone’s question like “Have you been to a place called Adlestrop?” “Yes, I remember Adlestrop ….” The train the speaker was on stopped unexpectedly at a village for a short while. He looked at the scenery and heard a blackbird sing, and then other birds. It was June, a hot day.
After a first reading, we need to get deeper into the meaning or point of the poem. The point of a poem is the reason for writing it, the thoughts and feelings that drive the writer to write. How does the writer feel about Adlestrop? What does it mean to him? To get answers, read the poem aloud a few times. If a line does not end in a stop, then we should carry on until we come to a stop. When reading, pay attention to the writer’s use of punctuation marks, to see when he wants us to pause or to run on. Stops and continuations make up the flow of the verse. In the first stanza, there are three stops in the first two lines -- the speaker is reminiscing. “The name” in line 2 is bounded on both sides by a pause, because it is just the name that the speaker saw on the platform. He did not get off to visit the village. Then there is no punctuation mark until line 4, so we should read “because … unwontedly” as one long unit. In other words, we should read in sense groups, like “one afternoon of heat,” (time phrase) “came on the bare platform,” and “sang close by”. The four-syllable adverb “unwontedly,” occurring at the beginning of a new line, slows down the flow, emphasizing the unexpected.
Another sound pattern to listen to is the rhythm or the pattern of stressed (/) and unstressed (v) syllables. The most noticeable use of the rhythm is towards the end. The third stanza shows this pattern:
v / v / v / v /
v / v / v / v /
v / v / v / v /
/ v / / v v v /
It is quite regular except for the last line. The regularity expresses a sense of form and control.
Think about the words and sentences in detail. Now you need to think about “the colour of the words”. By that I mean all the meanings a word calls up. Each word has its own character. A word can be long or short; archaic or fashionable; technical or common; general or specific; literal in meaning or full of suggestions (think about the word “mother”); and formal or informal; favorable, neutral or unfavorable. Some words stimulate our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. In this poem, “unwontedly”, “whit” and “fair” are old-fashioned, less usual words, giving a sense of age to the village and its surroundings. Most of the other words are rather simple and straightforward, one or two syllables long; they are used to narrate a seemingly ordinary event. The words “bare,” “unwontedly,” “lonely” convey something negative, but not too sad.
There are some sound words at first: “… hissed. … cleared his throat”; they are ordinary sounds heard in a train ride. There is “heat” that the passengers feel. They might be a bit uncomfortable. Five names of grasses or plants are mentioned, and two proper names besides that of the village, “Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.”
One thing that words do a lot in poetry is to paint a picture. When a picture appears in the mind, we have an image of something, and that can carry meaning like any picture can. The stillness and loneliness of the cloudlets up in the sky mirrors the stillness and loneliness of the village below. We have in front of us a rural scene, a still life.
“Haycock dry” would be “dry haycock” in ordinary prose. It is common for poetic language to depart from the normal word order such as adjective--noun, or subject–verb–object–adverbial. Try to put the words back in their normal order in order to get the plain sense of the phrases or sentences they form. Then later, consider why the word order is changed. What effect is the writer trying to achieve by reversing the order? In the poem, “dry” ends the line so that it rhymes with “sky” in the fourth line. Also put in any words that would be considered missing in ordinary prose. One way the half of the last sentence might read is like this: “… and all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire [subject] … (sang) [understood verb] around him [adverb].”
Consider how the sound and rhythm of the lines express the sense. The sounds in the first two stanzas create a matter-of-fact narrative tone. In the four factual statements beginning with “It was late June,” the sentences are short, short, short and long. They prepare the way for a long description of the scenery (ll 8-12), and a long description of the birds singing over a very large area covering two counties (ll 14-16). Reading a poem several times should reveal the tone of the speaker. Feel the tone – unexcited in the first two stanzas, then more attentive in the third, until in the last stanza, a deeply satisfied tone. The tone shows the attitude of the writer to the subject matter.
Note the arrangement of the lines into stanzas (the poetic form). There are generally eight syllables each line, sometimes nine. Four lines make up one paragraph or stanza, and there are four stanzas. The first two tell the event, the third describes the scene and the fourth the songs of the birds. The development of the ideas is quite logical. The pattern of a poem is something to note and enjoy, just like that of a painting or a ceramic figurine. It is part of the design of the composition.
Put everything together -- the words and their meanings and their sounds, and the lines and sentences and their pattern -- to get the total meaning or the point of the poem. The poem could almost end at the end of the second stanza, with “only the name”. It is as if the poet answered with a dismissive answer, “I only know the name.” There is no punctuation mark after the second “name,” so we should read on. However, because of the break in the layout -- we pause a little. In meaning, the word “And” contradicts the word “only” somewhat. It is as if the rest of the poem was an afterthought. The writer, after noting the name of the village, then looked around and noted the grasses and plants there. The specific names suggest that he observed them in detail.
Suddenly, a blackbird sang, and that seemed to cause many birds to sing too. This is an exaggeration, since all the birds in two shires could not sing all at once. But the “still” and “lonely” scene is now transformed. It seemed to the writer the birds were singing in an ever-widening circle. Notice how the rhythm of the last stanza echoes the sense.
/ v v / v v / v /
/ v v v / v / v v
/ v v / v / v /
v / v v v / v v
The pattern of / v v represents the songs of the birds which are becoming weaker and weaker as they fan out. Together, the flow and rhythm of the third and fourth stanzas bring out the poet’s feeling. Starting with “round him” (2 syllables), the subsequent phrases get longer and longer: “mistier” (3 syllables), “farther and farther” (5 syllables). The subject, “all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucstershire,” (11 syllables) rises to a crescendo, like a ripple spreading out to faraway places.
So, the poem is about an unexpected encounter with natural beauty during what was at first an uneventful event. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” (Keats) Such a thing of beauty occurred unexpectedly and it was a joy to the poet. That was what Adlestrop meant to him.
There are other techniques which are evident. It is useful to learn more about poetic techniques if we want to deepen our knowledge of poetry, but technical terms are not essential to and should not be a substitute for the enjoyment of poetry.