ADLESTROP
Edward Thomas
Yes. I remember Adlestrop--
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. 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.
In late June 1914, June 24th, to be precise. Thomas stopped at the little halt at Adlestrop in Gloucestershire, just a few weeks before the outbreak of the war which would claim his life.
The station, on the Cotswold Line, ws closed in 1966.
