Divining this, I knew the voice that called you
Was soft and neutral as the sky
Breathing on the grey horizon, stronger
Than night's immediate grasp, the limbs of mercy
Oblivious as the blood; and growing clearer,
More urgent as all else dissolved away,
--Projected books, half-thoughts, the children's birthdays,
And wedding anniversaries as cold
As dates in history--the dream
Emerging from the fact that folds a dream,
The endless rides of stormy-branched dark
Whose fibres are a thread within the hand-
Till suddenly, at Arras*, you possessed that hinted land.
Edward Thomas was killed at the Battle of Arras in Northern France in April 1917, soon after he arrived there. So, the “hinted land”, the ending of the turmoil implied by “stormy-branched dark”, was ultimately his.
To Edward Thomas