Chapter 7

The poems of Edward Thomas

As an ecostylistics project locating Edward Thomas within the poetic tradition of Romantic Ecology, this chapter uses Systemic Functional Grammar to analyse nature-referring noun phrases in his Collected Poems. Nature is represented as active, the categories WATER, WEATHER, MONTHS/SEASONS, LIGHT/DARK, TREES, BIRDS providing the most important Actors and Sayers. Thomas deliberately blurs the human-natural boundary through activation of Tokens/Existents, personification and co-ordination of the human and non-human. The chapter also examines the use of imagery/symbolism, in relation to Graham Hough’s (1961) typology of literary genres. Thomas displays the whole gamut of subtle differences on the simile-literal comparison continuum, while telescoping the literal and metaphorical through literalisation. Examination of individual poems illustrates this metaphorical blurring of the abstract ineffable theme and the repeated literal description. The ineffability is reflected in quantitative data on negatives, indeterminate pronouns, and agentless passives, pointing to Thomas’s emphasis on the inadequacy of human language, contrasted with birdsong. An attempt is made to relate this imagistic style to his psychology, patriotism and poetic creed.