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Time and Place: memory, journeys and home
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These poems show how places stay in the memory, and how time changes the way we see them.
Adlestrop (Edward Thomas) and Home-Thoughts, from Abroad (Robert Browning)
Adlestrop: a train stops briefly at a country station: "Yes. I remember Adlestrop". In the silence, "a blackbird sang / Close by, and round him, mistier, / Farther and farther, all the birds / Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire." Thomas was killed in the First World War in 1917, which makes this peaceful memory poignant.
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad: "Oh, to be in England / Now that April's there". The speaker longs for spring in England, which he prefers to "this gaudy melon-flower!" abroad.
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad: "Oh, to be in England / Now that April's there". The speaker longs for spring in England, which he prefers to "this gaudy melon-flower!" abroad.
Where the Picnic Was (Hardy) and I started Early - Took my Dog (Dickinson)
Where the Picnic Was: the speaker returns in winter to the place "Where we made the fire / In the summer time". The others have gone, and one has died. Hardy wrote it after the death of his wife.
I started Early - Took my Dog (Emily Dickinson): the speaker walks to the sea, which is personified as a man who follows her back to the town before withdrawing. The poem can be read as a dreamlike encounter with something powerful and threatening.
I started Early - Took my Dog (Emily Dickinson): the speaker walks to the sea, which is personified as a man who follows her back to the town before withdrawing. The poem can be read as a dreamlike encounter with something powerful and threatening.
In Romney Marsh (John Davidson)
The speaker describes a walk across Romney Marsh on the Kent coast, full of vivid colour and sound, including the sea and the wires running across the marsh.
It celebrates a specific English landscape at a moment in time.
It celebrates a specific English landscape at a moment in time.
How does Thomas make a short moment memorable in Adlestrop?
- Nothing much happens: a train stops.
- He focuses on silence and a single blackbird, whose song spreads across two counties.
- The moment becomes a peaceful snapshot of England, made more moving by Thomas's death in the war.
Answer: By focusing on tiny details (silence, a blackbird) that widen into a timeless picture of the English countryside.
Adlestrop: a peaceful remembered moment. Home-Thoughts: longing for an English spring. Where the Picnic Was: return to a place changed by loss. Dickinson: the sea personified. In Romney Marsh: a vivid English landscape.
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