poem

The Glory — Aug 30, 2026

Edward Thomas

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THE glory of the beauty of the morning,--
The cuckoo crying over the untouched dew;
The blackbird that has found it, and the dove
That tempts me on to something sweeter than love;
White clouds ranged even and fair as new-mown hay;
The heat, the stir, the sublime vacancy
Of sky and meadow and forest and my own heart:--
The glory invites me, yet it leaves me scorning
All I can ever do, all I can be,
Beside the lovely of motion, shape, and hue,
The happiness I fancy fit to dwell
In beauty's presence. Shall I now this day
Begin to seek as far as heaven, as hell,
Wisdom or strength to match this beauty, start
And tread the pale dust pitted with small dark drops,
In hope to find whatever it is I seek,
Hearkening to short-lived happy-seeming things
That we know naught of, in the hazel copse?
Or must I be content with discontent
As larks and swallows are perhaps with wings?
And shall I ask at the day's end once more
What beauty is, and what I can have meant
By happiness? And shall I let all go,
Glad, weary, or both? Or shall I perhaps know
That I was happy oft and oft before,
Awhile forgetting how I am fast pent,
How dreary-swift, with naught to travel to,
Is Time? I cannot bite the day to the core.

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📖 About this poem

Edward Thomas begins "The Glory" with all the props of a nature poem — cuckoo, blackbird, dove, white clouds "ranged even and fair as new-mown hay" — but the poem quickly turns inward, using that morning beauty as a provocation rather than a comfort. The long, unspooling sentences and restless questions mimic a mind turning something over without settling, which is very much the point: Thomas doesn't trust easy rapture, and keeps asking what beauty and happiness actually amount to. The most memorable image is the closing one, biting "the day to the core," a plain, almost hungry phrase that captures the wish to possess a fleeting experience fully. What keeps this poem alive is its honesty about ambivalence — the sense that joy and dissatisfaction can occupy the same moment, that we can feel "glad, weary, or both." Anyone who's stood in a beautiful morning and felt oddly unequal to it will recognize the mood exactly.