Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Rose Acre, Bearsted Green, Maidstone, Kent. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/4
To the writer of 'The Crier By Night'
Greeting and congratulations -
I read the play and I said I would, on the Saturday before last at an inn on the Pilgrims Road, and I have just read it again, no so much to look for beauties or faults as to renew the unbroken wave of pleasure which it gave me at first. For me, at any rate, the play is a delicit (?) experience and I don't want to criticise it. I said it gave an unbroken wave etc, because it seemed to me to have neglect unity(?) ; that is a great(?) thing. As in the nature of the impression it made, I find it hard to ?. There are a few books or passages in books - in WB Yeats, in Keats, in 'The Roadmender' , in The Opium Eater & 'Religio Medici' & one or two more - which quite overcome my intelligence because (I think) I am so much in sympathy with them that they seem to belong to my own experience' in some cases, I even feel, I hope not imprudently, 'I ought to have written that myself'. That is how I felt when I put down your book. The story, the air of the thing, above all the rhythm , made an atmosphere that I lived in more freely than -
I can often do. It is magical: your muse is the one that visits Yeats. In two places only I think the muse was ungenerous to you (or you did not listen to her). I mean in the lyrics. [Next 2 lines crossed out] The first contains one perfect line. The scent of the mead at the harping I shall not hear again. The first one contains several lines that are exquisite in sound, but I cannot justify your used of 'hear' in this line -
'The scent of the mead as the harping I shall not hear again.' The three verses don't seem to me clear enough. You are as fantastic in other places, but in these lyrics I think I see an effort at being fantastic which is invisible elsewhere. Thus in the line -
'My bare cry shivers along the shiny rushes of the drownes lake' - I know exactly what you mean, but I think the expression does not properly clothe the fancy. Still it is a terrible, difficult thing to express of it is a fancy that would come to anybody else almost as elusively and untranslateably as for example a scent. That is your danger; you hover continually on the verge of what is probably inexpressible. Your success is all the more brilliant. I have one quibble: you use the word 'unaged' too often, and where you use the word twice in successive lines you are obscure.... Where did you get the cry 'Ohohey' from? I quite frightened myself by repenting it on a dark road.
You know I spoke about certain books as
feeding me? Yours is one. It sets my brain on fire. I could write an essay on it or 'after' it, and someday I hope I shall; but I am still busy reviewing, and there are many things I have to postpone. So this note is merely a greeting and congratulation. Have you a copy of 'White Nights' I could see? I think Helen has a letter for you. She sends her love with mine. Edward Thomas.