Thomas, Edward - George F. Whicher (essay date April 1920)
George F. Whicher (essay date April 1920)
SOURCE: Whicher, George F. “Edward Thomas.” The Yale Review 9, no. 3 (April 1920): 556-67.
[In the following essay, written just three years after Thomas's death, the author focuses on the intimacy and sincerity of Thomas's poems, which, the author argues, reflect a “desire to comprehend the world's beauty” along with a “resolve to know the fullness of its reality.”]
So many recent English poets, especially those whose lives have been sealed perfect in the war, have been youthful men that it is a surprise to learn that Edward Thomas, a poet of two years' standing, was thirty-eight when he died in action, and had been, as his three words of autobiography in “Who's Who” inform us, “always a writer.” He was born in 1878 of Welsh parentage. His family traditions kept him a little distinct from the South England of his boyhood, and that in turn preserved him from the folly of...
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