Ah! At last, after some years of endless rain, we have summer and on a hot June day, Edward Thomas's beautiful "Adelstrop" came to mind. It seemed this morning and this evening that 'all the birds of" Yorkshire sang and every flower that ever grew in England flourished today! The swans and ducks were so happily floating through the golden light over the lake at Temple Newsam! How beautiful is the sunshine and the summer!
Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontendly. 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.
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