A couple of years ago I bought the collected poems of Edward Thomas, knowing only a small handful of the better known verses. I was just getting to know and love the poems when a relative's birthday came along and as I had nothing else suitable by me at the time, and I knew he would love them, I gave him the book which I had just bought. I intended to go out and buy another copy for myself but I forgot. Fortunately today as I was pottering around a bookshop looking for something to read on holiday, I came across this volume and now I am looking forward to getting to know the poems well.

I grew up in a family that loved and enjoyed words. The house was full of all manner of books, some of the classics but also a pretty random selection of stuff, both literary and popular. It was a country upbringing in a fairly remote spot and quite often on winter evenings or  car journeys we would play word games. One of my favourite games was called "What's the difference?" The game was based on Spoonerisms. You had to find a word or two that would produce a good Spoonerism that made sense, and then make up a pair of definitions to suit it. 
The following example, which we all thought a bit risqué at the time, was thought up by my Mum:
"What's the difference between a ladies' reticule and a groupie?"
(The answer is "one is a handbag and the other a band hag.")
This probably sounds a bit judgmental but I don't believe it was meant as such; my Mum came from a Bloomsbury background and was quite non conformist - it was just a bit of fun. 
Let me know if you happen to invent a few of your own...I look forward to being tested...



Words

Out of us all
That make rhymes
Will you choose
Sometimes -
As the winds use
A crack in a wall
Or a drain,
Their joy or their pain
To whistle through -
Choose me,
You English words?

I know you:
You are light as dreams,
Tough as oak,
Precious as gold,
As poppies and corn,
Or an old cloak:
Sweet as our birds
To the ear,
As the burnet rose
In the heat
Of Midsummer:
Strange as the races
Of dead and unborn:
Strange and sweet
Equally,
And familiar,
To the eye,
As the dearest faces
That a man knows,
And as lost homes are:
But though older far
Than oldest yew, -
As our hills are, old, -
Worn new
Again and again:
Young as our streams
After rain:
And as dear
As the earth which you prove
That we love.

Make me content
With some sweetness
From Wales
Whose nightingales
Have no wings, -
From Wiltshire and Kent
And Herefordshire, -
And the villages there, -
From the names, and the things
No less.
Let me sometimes dance
With you,
Or climb
Or stand perchance
In ecstasy,
Fixed and free
In a rhyme,
As poets do. 



Edward Thomas