Edward Thomas 시 "The Owl"

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Edward Hirsch, 100 Poems to Break Your Heart 에서 (9)

 

 

The Owl

 

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;

Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof

Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest

Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

 

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,

Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.

All of the night was quite barred out except

An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

 

Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,

No merry note, nor cause of merriment,

But one telling me plain what i escaped

And others could not, that night, as in I went.

 

And salted was my food, and my repose,

Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice

Speaking for all who lay under the stars,

Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.

 

(1915)

 

 

We hear the emphatic repetition of s and z sounds, which solemnly whisper through the last stanza, binding many of the key words to one another.

 

Edward Thomas enlisted three months after he wrote "The Owl," an early war poem that refuses to sound a triumphant or patriotic note. His decision to serve reflected what Walter de la Mare called his "compassionate and suffering heart," but it would also lead  to his undoing. On April 9, 1917, he died by shell blast in the Battle of Arras on the western front, at the age of thirty-five.

 

 

 

 

Edward Thomas (사진: Poetry Foundation)