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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
SONNET: 2. FEBRUARY AFTERNOON, by PHILIP EDWARD THOMAS Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw
Last Line: That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.
Alternate Author Name(s): Eastaway, Edward; Thomas, Edward
Variant Title(s): February Afternoon
Subject(s): Birds; Time; World War I; First World War
First Line: Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw
Last Line: That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.
Alternate Author Name(s): Eastaway, Edward; Thomas, Edward
Variant Title(s): February Afternoon
Subject(s): Birds; Time; World War I; First World War
Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,
A thousand years ago even as now,
Black rooks with white gulls following the plough
So that the first are last until a caw
Commands that last are first again, -- a law
Which was old when one, like me, dreamed how
A thousand years might dust lie on his brow
Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.
Time swims before me, making as a day
A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak
Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke
Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,
And God still sits aloft in the array
That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.
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