http://www.thehypertexts.com/Best%20Poems%20Ever%20Greatest%20Poetry%20of%20All%20Time.htm
Edward Thomas is not as well-known as some of the other poets on this page, but “Adlestrop” was among the top ten most requested poems at Poetry Please, so he continues to have fans. “Adlestrop” is a somewhat mysterious poem, because nothing really happens and yet it seems extraordinarily sad. Thomas was a literary critic, biographer and book reviewer who became a close friend of Robert Frost when he moved to England. It was Frost who persuaded Thomas to begin writing poetry around 1913-14, and Thomas was on his way to meet Frost when he wrote the poem below. Thomas was also close to the “tramp” or “hobo” poet W. H. Davies, and help bring him to the attention of the reading public. Thomas died at the battle of Arras in 1917, so all his poems were written within a very narrow window of time. It is said that he decided to enlist at the age of 37 after reading a pre-publication version of Frost’s famous poem about indecision, “The Road Not Taken.” Thomas died never having seen any of his poems in print.
Adlestrop
by Edward Thomas
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.
How my heart sings 
I think it was the Normans that really stormed their way across Europe – conquering England was just a side-show for them!
And they were Vikings weren’t they?
Yes but they acquired some extra ‘conquering’ abilities as they migrated down through the Low countries and Belgium…
I see they went to Byzantium.I am told my head is Scandinavian shaped… long heads.It is very big too but not metaphorically.:)
I studied that poem for O level but I didn’t recall the mention of Edward Thomas.Thank you.
It’s odd how memory works. Those were the lines I remembered, because they led me to find out more about Edward Thomas.
I can remember the beginning of the poem and imagine them all wet on the moors.I suppose I had not heard of Edward Thomas then.It is sad he joined the Army in 1917 and got killed.I wonder now whether the loss of fine young men from the gense pool not to mention the Jews of Europe who are known to be more intelligent than average has caused the decline of Europe… many women had no children also as their iances were killed….it’s sad anyway for senseless slaughter.. would we have a different kind of society now if the Wars had not happened?We seem to be very aggressive in Western Europe… is the Viking blood?
as Alun Lewis wrote in his poem ‘All Day it has Rained’:
“…the shaggy patient dog who followed me
By Sheet and Steep and up the wooded scree
To the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas brooded long
On death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.”