Adlestrop

We're getting near to the start of the main centenary season, but before we do so I heard on the radiothis morning that today is the centenary of the unscheduled stop that Edward Thomas's train made in Adlestrop.

Here's the poem:

Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. 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.         

 I think we read it in school, but I've never studied it and the discussion on the radio was fascinating. Thomas did not write the poem until 1915 when he was at war, and with that knowledge you immediately see that incredible pause -  "No one left and no one came" - as if there is a vast holding of breath before the start of the July Crisis and everything that followed on from it.