Who Wrote The Poem “Adelstrop”?

This poem, with its often-quoted opening line "Yes. I remember Adelstrop" is probably the best-known work of Edward Thomas. Written in 1915, it is often given as an example of a poem that perfectly captures the essence of a place in a short time (only 16 lines.) Perhaps the outstanding feature of "Adelstrop" is the way it contrasts the absolute silence and emptiness of the place ("no-one left and no-one came/ On the bare platform") with the continuing, joyful vitality of the surrounding countryside:
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire."
Even the sound of the poem echoes the birdsong, the liquid syllables of the place-names contrasting with the bleak, "bare" human setting. The poem's date is worth noticing; Thomas didn't start writing poetry until the start of World War One in 1914, and the war forms the background to all his poems. Here, there is something sinister about the emptiness of Adelstrop – a reminder that many of its population were away fighting.

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