Themes

Abstract

When Thomas wrote that ‘English poetry, at its best, can hardly avoid the open air’, he said perhaps as much about himself, and his dependence on the countryside, as he did about English poetry. An acute and realistic observer of wild-life, trees, plants, country sights and smells, the weather and the seasons, and to a lesser extent country folk and their ways, he builds a picture of rural southern England which explains the patriotism that led him to fight in France. His eye is comprehensive and sees the most humble phenomena, the bird-dung, the broken-down farm machinery, the grass growing in old nests, as well as the more conventional beautiful morning and glorious sunset.