Hello and welcome to The Daily Poem. I'm Heidi White, filling in for David Kern, and today is Wednesday, February 10th. It feels so good to be back on the Daily Poem. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. Today I'm going to read for you a poem by British poet, essayist, and novelist Edward Thomas. Thomas was born in 1878 and he died in 1917 when

he was killed in action in World War I. And he's considered by many to be a war poet,

though this is not quite accurate. He wrote nearly all of his poetry before the war. He was

actually encouraged to write by Robert Frost himself, who really

liked Thomas's poetry. Thomas only lived to see one of his collections of poetry published in his

lifetime, although most of it was indeed published posthumously. And he's considered by contemporary

critics to be a greatly influential poet of the modern period.

That's capital M modern, although in his own lifetime and in his own period, he wasn't widely studied.

But now critics are seeing the connections that were and the influence that he had from his poetry manifested in modern poetry.

And today's poem that I'm going to read for you is called

Selendine, and this is how it goes. Thinking of her had saddened me at first, until I saw the sun

on the Selendines lie redoubled, and she stood up like a flame, a living thing, not what before

I nursed, the shadow I was growing to love

almost, the phantom, not the creature with bright eye that I had thought never to see, once lost.

She found the celendines of February always before us all. Her nature and name were like those

flowers, and now immediately for a short, swift eternity

back she came. Beautiful, happy, simply as when she wore her brightest bloom among the winter

hues of all the world, and I was happy too, seeing the blossoms and the maiden who had seen them

with me February's before, bending to them

as in and out she trod and laughed with locks sweeping the mossy sod. But this was a dream.

The flowers were not true until I stooped to pluck from the grass there one of five petals,

and I smelt the juice which made me sigh remembering she was no more gone like a never perfectly recalled air so a selendine is a flower

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