Great Lines: Edward Thomas

An ode to the beautiful and heartening November sun, by the great Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Welsh poet of war and nature.

There’s Nothing Like the Sun
By Edward Thomas

There’s nothing like the sun as the year dies,
Kind as can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and birds and beasts and flies,
To all things that it touches except snow,
Whether on mountainside or street of town.
The south wall warms me: November has begun,
Yet never shone the sun as fair as now
While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough
With spangles of the morning’s storm drop down
Because the starling shakes it, whistling what
Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot
That there is nothing, too, like March’s sun,
Like April’s, or July’s, or June’s, or May’s,
Or January’s, or February’s, great days:
August, September, October, and December
Have equal days, all different from November.
No day of any month but I have said—
Or, if I could live long enough, should say—
’There’s nothing like the sun that shines today.’
There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead.

Edward Thomas, 1878–1917. Shown circa 1905.

University Parks, Oxford, 15 November 2023.