The known
truth alters from age to age; but the thrill of the recognition of the
truth stands fast for all our human eternity. Year by year the universe
grows vaster, and man, by virtue of the growing brightness of his little
lamp, sees himself more and more as a child born in the midst of a dark
forest, and finds himself less able to claim the obeisance of the all.
Yet if he would be a poet, and not a harper of threadbare tunes, he must
at each step in the downward passing from his sovereignty, recognise
what is and celebrate it as what must be. Thus he regains, by another
path, the supremacy which he has forsaken.
Edward Thomas's poetry has the virtue of this recognition. It may be
said that his universe was not vaster but smaller than the universe of
the past, for its bounds were largely those of his own self. It is, even
in material fact, but half true. None more closely than he regarded the
living things of earth in all their quarters. 'After Rain' is, for
instance, a very catalogue of the texture of nature's visible garment,
freshly put on, down to the little ash-leaves
'.
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