I remember Adlestrop

because the day after our wedding, 53 years ago, we drove West from Cambridge heading towards Ireland, and encountered Adlestrop in the way. My new husband was not aware of the significance of Adlestrop, but he had the grace to say that travelling with me would be instructive.

 

I loved the poem when I read it at school, not for the First World War associations, but because it perfectly evoked memories of just such rustic stops on the railway in Hertfordshire when I was a small child.

 

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.

 

Edward Thomas

 

 

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