SOURCE: Draper, R. P. “Edward Thomas: The Unreasonable Grief.” In Lyric Tragedy, pp. 131-43. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985.

In the following essay, Draper considers Thomas as a writer of “lyric tragedy,” comparing him to Keats and Hardy, with special attention to Thomas's treatment of nature, war, and mortality.

Edward Thomas is strongly reminiscent of both Keats and Hardy. Keats is recalled in ‘Blenheim Oranges’ by the ambivalent image of apples that ‘Fall grubby from the trees’, and in ‘The sun used to shine’ by the mixture of ripeness and rottenness in ‘the yellow flavorous coat / Of an apple wasps had undermined’.¹ Less immediately in terms of style, but with a similar sense of the organic process that makes death and life seem inherent in all seasons, Thomas also suggests Keats when in ‘The Thrush’, for example, the bird's song heard in November prompts reflections on its associations...