Uploaded December 2014 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of a recitation one of my favourite poems by Edward Thomas who died on active service in world war 1 "The Gallows" The Poem is virtually recited by his widow Helen Thomas.
Helen Thomas (1877 - 1967) was the wife of Edward Thomas (1878–
1917), one of England’s most prominent poets in the first
decades of the twentieth century. She was emotionally devastated
when he died in combat in April 1917, and she turned
to writing to deal with her grief. Her two-volume autobiography,
As It Was (1926) and World Without End (1931), describes
their life together and offers a detailed portrait of what life
was like on the British home front during World War I. In her
memoir, Thomas did not use the real names of the people she
described, but it was obvious that she was writing an
intensely personal account of her life with Edward. In 1972,
under the supervision of Thomas’s daughter Myfanwy, an
edition was issued with a key to the characters’ names.
Uplifted by the success of her books, Helen Thomas recovered
from her depression. During World War II (1939–45), on her
farm, she sheltered mothers and children who were evacuated
from London during the German bombing. She died on
April 12, 1967, fifty years and three days after the death of
her husband in battle.
This exquisite and very sinister poem "The Gallows" was written in 1912 . The Gallows owes a debt to the ballad tradition and to related forms of popular verse. It achieves a grimness that is very satisfying. There are some wonderfully tight-lipped phrasings here a thief and a murderer / Till a very late hour, this keeper / Made him one of the things that were, He could both talk and do / But what did that avail?, for instance and an expressive handling of the relationship between metrical line and sentence. Edward Philip Thomas was born in Lambeth, London in 1878, of Welsh descent. He was educated at St Paul's college and then Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he studied history. A prolific writer of prose (including biographies of Richard Jefferies, Swinburne, and Keats), and a moderately successful journalist, his work concentrated on the image of England and the countryside. Thomas suffered from severe bouts of depression and recurrent psychological breakdowns, feeling creatively repressed by the endless reviews and ill-paid commissions he had to do to support himself and his family. Although happier with his writings on countryside that mixed observation, information, literary criticism, self-reflection and portraiture, Thomas still felt that his style was not original enough to merit recognition and struggled to ... .
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
Here's a virtual movie of a recitation one of my favourite poems by Edward Thomas who died on active service in world war 1 "The Gallows" The Poem is virtually recited by his widow Helen Thomas.
Helen Thomas (1877 - 1967) was the wife of Edward Thomas (1878–
1917), one of England’s most prominent poets in the first
decades of the twentieth century. She was emotionally devastated
when he died in combat in April 1917, and she turned
to writing to deal with her grief. Her two-volume autobiography,
As It Was (1926) and World Without End (1931), describes
their life together and offers a detailed portrait of what life
was like on the British home front during World War I. In her
memoir, Thomas did not use the real names of the people she
described, but it was obvious that she was writing an
intensely personal account of her life with Edward. In 1972,
under the supervision of Thomas’s daughter Myfanwy, an
edition was issued with a key to the characters’ names.
Uplifted by the success of her books, Helen Thomas recovered
from her depression. During World War II (1939–45), on her
farm, she sheltered mothers and children who were evacuated
from London during the German bombing. She died on
April 12, 1967, fifty years and three days after the death of
her husband in battle.
This exquisite and very sinister poem "The Gallows" was written in 1912 . The Gallows owes a debt to the ballad tradition and to related forms of popular verse. It achieves a grimness that is very satisfying. There are some wonderfully tight-lipped phrasings here a thief and a murderer / Till a very late hour, this keeper / Made him one of the things that were, He could both talk and do / But what did that avail?, for instance and an expressive handling of the relationship between metrical line and sentence. Edward Philip Thomas was born in Lambeth, London in 1878, of Welsh descent. He was educated at St Paul's college and then Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he studied history. A prolific writer of prose (including biographies of Richard Jefferies, Swinburne, and Keats), and a moderately successful journalist, his work concentrated on the image of England and the countryside. Thomas suffered from severe bouts of depression and recurrent psychological breakdowns, feeling creatively repressed by the endless reviews and ill-paid commissions he had to do to support himself and his family. Although happier with his writings on countryside that mixed observation, information, literary criticism, self-reflection and portraiture, Thomas still felt that his style was not original enough to merit recognition and struggled to ... .
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved on this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2014
