Column: Poet's deep affinity for nature is something we need to recover

Going back, though … A poet whom Larkin admired was Edward Thomas, who wrote in the early 20th century, at a time when it was still possible to celebrate rural life without envisaging the wholesale damage being done to it now.

We need to read his poetry, I think, in order to register what has been lost, why it matters and why we need to recover his deep affinity with nature.

One thing we should know about Thomas is that he wrote much of his work during World War I, and that in July 1915 he enlisted in the army.

When a friend enquired why he was joining up, Thomas picked up a pinch of earth and crumbled it between finger and thumb before letting it fall. ‘Literally, for this.’ He meant, of course, England …the land … the earth.

One of his most famous poems is ‘Adlestrop’ (written January 1915), in which he recalls the moment a train he was on drew up at a quiet country station: ‘… What I saw/Was Adlestrop—only the name/And willows, willow-herb, and grass,/And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,/No whit less still and lonely fair/Than the high cloudlets in the sky./And for that minute a blackbird sang/Close by, and round him, mistier,/Farther and farther, all the birds/Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.’

The natural world is the ever-widening and ever-wonderful context for human activity. There is a harmony which surrounds our comings and goings, and we can hear and appreciate it if we stop and listen.

‘The Owl’ (written February 1915) has Thomas walking a great distance and then deciding to stay at a country tavern. ‘Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest/Knowing how hungry, cold and tired was I.’ However, he cannot help but hear in the distance ‘An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry’.

Thus he concludes: ‘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.’

We are all inhabitants of the earth, and are responsible one for another, as the voice of another inhabitant – the owl – reminds us.

Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras in April 1917. He cared so much for the earth of England that he was prepared to die in its defence. Surely it is worth saving from the forces which are currently destroying it?