The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

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In Pursuit of Spring
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On every hand lies cromlech, camp, circle, hut and tumulus of the unwritten years. They are confused and mingled with the natural litter of a barren land. It is a silent Bedlam of history, a senseless cemetery or museum, amidst which we walk as animals must do when they see those valleys full of skeletons where their kind are said to go punctually to die. There are enough of the dead; they outnumber the living, and there those trite truths burst with life and drum upon the tympanum with ambiguous fatal voices. At the end of this many barrowed moor, yet not in it, there is a solitary circle of grey stones, where the cry of the past is less vociferous, less bewildering, than on the moor itself, but more intense. Nineteen tall, grey stones stand round a taller, pointed one that is heavily bowed, amidst long grass and bracken and furze. A track passes close by, but does not enter the circle; the grass is unbent except by the weight of its bloom. It bears a name that connects it with the assembling and rivalry of the bards of Britain. Here, under the sky, they met, leaning upon the stones, tall fair men of peace, but half warriors, whose songs could change ploughshares into sword. Here they met, and the growth of the grass, the perfection of the stones (except that one stoops as with age), and the silence, suggest that since the last bard left it, in robe of blue or white or green - the colours of sky and cloud and grass upon this fair day - the circle has been unmolested, and the law obeyed which forbade any but a bard to enter it...

Edward Thomas

“Edward Thomas (1878-1917) was arguably the most accomplished and profound writer of English rural prose, with a unique poetic-prose style. His reputation rests almost entirely today on his poetry, the one hundred and forty four poems which he wrote in the last two years of his life, between December 1914 and December 1916. In January 1917 he embarked for France and the Battle of Arras in which he was killed on April 9th, 1917.

“In this series of three programmes Matthew Oates will be travelling to Steep in Hampshire, where Thomas lived, and where he wrote his most famous works. Not far away in Coate near Swindon is the home of Richard Jefferies, whom inspired Thomas. In Gloucestershire, Thomas lived for a few short weeks in 1914 with the Dymock poets, here it is believed he began to reject prose for poetry under the influence of his great friend Robert Frost. The series ends by the Quantocks in Somerset, the scene of the great romantic nature partnership between Coleridge and Wordsworth.”

More here.


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Littlestone
Posted by Littlestone
30th March 2013ce
22:16

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Megalithic Poems (Littlestone)

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