{"id":7201,"date":"2018-03-21T07:57:27","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T07:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7201"},"modified":"2018-03-21T07:57:27","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T07:57:27","slug":"february-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2018\/03\/21\/february-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"February Afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To mark World Poetry Day, here's Edward Thomas's\u00a0<strong>February Afternoon<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"post-copy\">\n<blockquote><p>Men heard this roar of parleying starlings, saw,<\/p>\n<p>A thousand years ago even as now,<\/p>\n<p>Black rooks with white gulls following the plough<\/p>\n<p>So that the first are last until a caw<\/p>\n<p>Commands that last are first again, \u2013 a law<\/p>\n<p>Which was of old when one, like me, dreamed how<\/p>\n<p>A thousand years might dust lie on his brow<\/p>\n<p>Yet thus would birds do between hedge and shaw.<\/p>\n<p>Time swims before me, making as a day<\/p>\n<p>A thousand years, while the broad ploughland oak<\/p>\n<p>Roars mill-like and men strike and bear the stroke<\/p>\n<p>Of war as ever, audacious or resigned,<\/p>\n<p>And God still sits aloft in the array<\/p>\n<p>That we have wrought him, stone-deaf and stone-blind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Thomas<\/strong> wrote this sonnet in 1916 \u2013 a year before he was killed at the battle of Arras. It is a reflection on the continuity and timelessness of nature, and, seemingly, of war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To mark World Poetry Day, here's Edward Thomas's\u00a0February Afternoon &nbsp; 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...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}