The Lofty Sky

Today I want the sky,

The tops of the high hills,

Above the last man’s house,

His hedges, and his cows,

Where, if I will, I look 

Down even on sheep and rook,

And of all things that move 

See buzzards only above: 

Past all trees, past furze 

And thorn, where naught deters 

The desire of the eye 

For sky, nothing but sky.

I sicken of the woods 

And all the multitudes 

Of hedge trees. They are no more 

Than weeds upon this floor 

Of the river of air 

Leagues deep, leagues wide, where 

I am like a fish that lives 

In weeds and mud and gives

What’s above him no thought.

I might be a tench for aught 

That I can do today 

Down on the wealden clay.

Even the tench has days 

Where he floats up and plays 

Among the lily leaves 

And sees the sky, or grieves 

Not if he nothing sees:

While I, I know that trees

Under that lofty sky

Are weeds, fields mud, and I 

Would arise and go far 

To where the lilies are. 

The Lofty Sky was EdwardThomas’s cry for freedom after being laid up for several days in early January 1915 at home at Yew Tree Cottage, unable to move far because of a badly sprained angle. By January 10th, when he wrote  the poem, he was able to get downstairs but was still trapped inside the small cottage. So when he wrote “ Today I want the sky/ The tops of the high hills” there was an element of desperation and frustration.

Although he had not experienced such a long enforced immobility indoors before,  the sentiment of wanting only the sky was one he had felt since childhood. In his autobiography, The Childhood of Edward Thomas, written a year or so before the poem, he recalled an early memory  “I can recall more simply and completely than any spent indoors at that time one day above others. I lay in the tall grass and buttercups of a narrow field at the edge of London and saw the sky and nothing but the sky.” 

His early reading included much of Richard Jefferies’s works, of which The Story of My Heart had a special influence on him. In this autobiography of his childhood, Jefferies had written much of the sky, particularly describing his frequent visits to the top of Liddington Hill,  near his childhood home at Coate, near Swindon. “Sometimes on lying down on the sward I first looked up at the sky, gazing for a long time till I could see deep into the azure and my eyes were full of the colour.” He wrote later in the book “It is enough to lie on the sward, in the shadow of green boughs, to listen to the songs of summer, to drink in the sunlight, the air, the flowers, the sky, the beauty of all. Or upon the hill-tops to watch the white clouds rising over the curved hill-lines, their shadows descending the slope...” ET had made a note about the young Jefferies' habit of lying on Liddington Hill  in one of his earlier Field Note Books (FNB6).

Contrasting with these airy dreams,  ET had made later notes in his field notebook of times when walking in woods, he had the sense of being a fish at the bottom of a stream - another striking image of the poem. The first time this occurred he was walking in Savernake Forest, near Marlborough in the spring of 1907. He had noted:“Looking up at tall swaying beeches with interlacing upper branches & sky in stormy/strong wind makes one feel [like a] fish when deep down among weeds.”

ET did not just apply his piscatorial similes to himself. In his notebooks. He also wrote of birds swimming like fish through the stream of air in the hangers, an image he used in a poem written shortly before The Lofty Sky, The Hollow Wood - see separate earlier post. In his notebook the flight of rooks or a magpie through the boughs of the hanging woods were like fish as he walked below them. He had also written of the moon “high in deep soft cloudy misty sky like a cold silver fish turning slowly.” Elsewhere he described the sun as a “fish’s mouth”, and a range of hills “like a shoal of fish”.

A few years later when walking in the Hangers on a sunny April afternoon, he had connected the two images which he was to combine later in the poem: “Such a lofty clear hot day that one feels buried down in the low country of/in woods & pastures, like a fish in bottom weeds.”

He had been walking on Wheatham Hill, the highest point of Ashford Hangers, earlier that day. There was an east wind which brought clouds over in “a great formless blue threat….like a huge mouth” deep in which could be seen clearly the darker blue ridges of Woolmer Forest and its pines to the east and below. Gradually this mass of clouds rose and dissipated and in 1/2 an hour the rain poured down out of a sky “in a lovely blue line in pane and white mountains.” Later the sun glared down.

So when ET wrote of the loftiness of the sky, it was not necessarily a clear sky with the sun high at its zenith, but a sky with high, sometimes indeterminate cloud masses or high cloud mountains.

There was also occasional use of the adjective “lofty” in his notebooks to describe other things. He used it for churches at Ledbury and Arundel, a horse in the fields close by his home in Steep and for a large wave on Dunwich beach in Suffolk. 

He also used lofty to describe either the sky or the hills around him, almost interchangeably. In his poem When First he wrote of Shoulder of Mutton Hill that “Never will/My heart beat so again at sight/ Of any hill although as fair /And loftier.”

When he had first arrived in Steep he had written lyrically about the beauty that he saw around him including a note on 3rd January 1907: 

“Every day 2 kestrels play together (especially on lofty blue windy days over Mutton or Wheatham) & with joy as when a man & woman dance or talk, obviously, in the(se) lovely loops.”

The Shoulder of Mutton, one of the heights of the Ashford Hangers, though bare on its flank, had a wooded top, like the other hangers. Wheatham Hill, a few hundred yards to the east, would have stood out more than now as it was bare on top, tonsured down to 210 metres - so there would have been 35 metres of height of bare hillside on top. However Thomas in the hangers below would only have seen its wooded flanks of beech and yew.  It seems to have been topped by corn fields, with a variety of flowers that would not have appeared on uncultivated Downland, except for the ubiquitous cowslip. 

Neither of these favourite hills would have drawn his eye in the same way that the range of the South Downs, three.miles south of Steep, some with bare tops and only the occasional thorn, furze and travellers joy atop. 

These were the hills that ET had in mind when writing The Lofty Sky. He could just about see them from his bedroom window at Yew Tree Cottage, and would have seen them every day, when clear, before he was laid up, stretching away, “like a line of elephants”, as he walked up or back from his study.

Two expeditions to the Downs had also prompted the use of the adjective "lofty" by Thomas. The first on 28th June 1909 was to Buriton, a village two miles south of Petersfield under the Downs. He had been at his study earlier, where he could see clearly across the Rother Vale to the Harting Downs, but beyond going East the Downs were misty to Chanctonbury. The Downs had cleared later and he had walked through fields and copses to Buriton, where he noted a Columbarium with doves, “high old walls, pond & chestnuts & church - then broad level mead behind church & then wooded hill”. 

In an extended note he described the sky as it appeared and changed throughout the afternoon and evening.

At 6.15 he noted “The sky very lofty but covered over with shadowy folded small soft grey sheep (insert tending to resemble close flocks of sheep), some of the clouds much bigger (making woods on little rises very blue & dark) but low in West under the silver moonlike sun. There is a dim immensely distant range of snow grey mountains & darker strata above - wind gusts rustles darkly in Ditcham poplars & there is dread of rain.”

On his next recorded visit to Buriton a few years later, in November 1912, he realised what he had took for poplars were in fact elms, “which skirt the big park like meadow & continue on toward the Harting Road.”

That day he had made an extended walk from Buriton to South Harting probably via Nursted and the Harting Road and back along the Downs, following the track that was to become the South Downs Way. Here he noted the travellers joy all over the blackthorn along “the old road by Castle Farm & Sunwood”, two high farms above the Harting Road, the  former now known as Foxcombe. The travellers joy, he could see “cresting the dark bare thorns on a hillside 1/2 a mile away with foam”. This hillside was West Harting Down, now covered mainly with trees, but in ET’s day its top was bare, making it one of the most prominent downs in the range. 

There are other hills that ET could have been thinking about - Butser Hill, the highest in the area and of the South Downs, was one that ET knew well and was often in sight on his walks. It was almosr certainly the Down in the The Down and the Barn - see separate post.  South Harting Down and Beacon Hill were also bare prominent downs - South Hartingtotpped by its famous clump of ash trees.

In June 1914 on a bike ride that had taken in Trotton and Treyford, he had climbed up the steep chalk road above Treyford to Buriton Farm and Hooksway, both nestled in a high valley amidst the downs. It was a showery day with occasional bouts of thunder and rooks soared and cawed above the hills. There was a heavy shower at 4pm when he described “above the soft dark downs is a mimic loftier & similar range, depressing & dwarfing it, but with rougher ridge agst the ruddy lightening clouds.”

He did not climb to the top of any of these Downs, even the closest, Beacon Hill, but returned on his bike to Steep along the road to Rogate and Petersfield. 

He could also have been thinking of other downs out of sight, further away, all chalk hills above the clay of the Weald and other lowlands. He had walked up Bignor Hill, above the Amberley/Arundel gap in the South Downs, one November day, from Flansham on the coastal plain. He went “up off this clay on to the chalk to Stane St , rough thorny land with Bignor Hill rising high & then down steep over moss & turf & clematis & thorn to Coldharbour & the broad fields with sunken lane & steep grassy sides & stumps of trees in them at foot of the high beechen ‘swoop?’ of Down..”

When on an expedition researching his book The South Country he had noted under Firle Beacon in East Sussex, close to Lewes: “Beautiful small woods of Firle Park & Heighton Street at foot of Firie belonging to Downs & not to Weald although so gently clustered & mounded.”

So the Down he was desiring so much to climb could have been one or some of a number of favourite ones across the South Country, whether in Hampshire, Sussex, Kent or Wiltshire. And of course not forgetting Liddington Hill where Richard Jefferies had had his apotheosis and which ET had walked over several times.  So one can take one’s pick! 

My own personal view is that it was West Harting Down he had in mind, and in sight, as he wrote The Lofty Sky in Yew Tree Cottage. The Down would have been one of the closest in look and topography in the area to the one he described in The Lofty Sky, with its bare top, almost peaked, its thorns, and the high farms - Castle and Sunwood - on the downland track beneath. 

From the viewpoint of Steep and the Hangers it was and is very much centre stage among the Downs when looking south, between Butser and War Down to the west and South Harting and Beacon Hill to the east. At the top of the Shoulder of Mutton, West Harting Down is framed by the beech trees, and looms straight ahead. And it also looms prominently further down the hill and in many places along the Ashford Hangers from the Red House eastwards where it looks closer than any other Down. It’s also one he could see more clearly than other bare downs when he walked back from his study to Yew Tree Cottage. 

Its position above Tarberry, one of ET’s favourite hills and an outcrop of the Downs, which he often noted, would have drawn his eye. Tarberry’s rake was parallel with the angle of West Harting Down’s slope.  Although not as close as Butser from his house, West Harting Down was one of the easiest bare downs to walk to. And he would have passed it more regularly than Butser on his regular forays east along the Downs to Flansham and Goodwood.  

In the poem the feeling of being a fish at the bottom of a stream is not just confined to walking in the hanging woods or forests. The innumerable “hedge trees” also made him think of weeds in a stream. (He almost invariably uses the word “weed” in his notebooks to describe weed in river or sea - not on land, where he would specifically name the different "weeds"). There were a huge spread of these hedge trees through the Rother Valkey between the hangers and the Downs, through which he would have walked to get to West Harting Down from Steep. A range of different trees - oaks, elms, beech, poplars, ash, field maples etc - stretched out along the field edges and in the hedges between the hangers and the downs at different levels and angles. In these fields with the hills receding, the sky would also have grown larger and loftier to the eye - and the trees diminished. As he walked towards the Downs from his home, he would have certainly experienced an opening up compared to being in the woods of the hangers, and had a foretaste of the even more untrammelled vision of sky at the top of the Downs.

A walk 

The Hangers have always owed more to the Downs than the Downs to the Hangers. Their wooded flanks at a distance are of less interest to the viewer than the bare sides of the downs.  

ET described the attraction of the Downs beautifully. In one note, like a Ravillious sketch, he wrote when looking out from Shoulder of Mutton on an August day in 1908: 

“Marvellous clear day of blue sky & white biggish clouds…., Chanctonbury clear & 4 or 5 ridges beyond, but the Harting Down greeny brown - almost olive - could almost be touched & I could revel in the moulding as if they? were an animal at hand - & all the rounded golden woods & the white roads.”

This was the view that ET had in his mind’s eye when he wrote The Lofty Sky and a walk along the hangers from Shoulder of Mutton to the grassy area on the path up from Ashford Farm to Wheatham Hill still provides wonderful views of the Downs at different angles, stretching from Salt Hill in the west to Chanctonbury - and further in the East, a stretch of some 40 miles on a clear day.

Alternatively a short walk can be taken up West Harting Down from the road to Ditcham School, by Sunwood Farm. There are a couple of parking places and you walk up the track on the left which is the South Downs Way. At the top take a right off the Way and then go through the woods by the side of the field and then leave the main track and follow a path 90’ to the right when the field ends climbing up between wood and field until the path levels out. From an old beech tree by the side of the field there are excellent views west and north along the Downs to Butser and over the Rother Vale to Petersfield, Steep with the hangers as a backdrop - all the way from Cold Hill and Great Hanger above Langrish to Noar Hill above Selborne. 

Following the path on to the end of the wood you go left up and follow the side of the wood round on three sides until you return to where you left the main path and retrace your steps back to the car.

Or you could walk up the track to the top of the Downs from Foxcombe Farm, known previously as Castle Farm. After the farm, take the path off the track on the right which goes steeply straight up the Downs. At the top go right along the tracke through the woods, doing the same circuit of the top wood as from Sunwood.

There are also good walks from Buriton that take you along the foot of the Downs and then up to the South Downs Way below West Harting Down and back along the top. 

The top of West Harting Down is now covered in woods but it would have been mainly bare in ET’s days with more wide ranging views all around. But the more limited view now is still very impressive and the field at the top, a landmark for miles around, lends itself well to enjoying the sky and “the tops of the high hills,/ Above the last man’s house, / His hedges, and his cows/ Where, if I will, I look/ Down even on sheep and rook,/ And of all things that move/ See buzzards only above…”

As a footnote there are very few references to buzzards in ET's notebooks - and none around the hangers or Downs. Edwardian gamekeepers “controlled” buzzards far too effectively and there were no restrictions on killing them. So a buzzard was an extremely rare sighting locally (only spotted by ET in Wales and Cornwall, the Celtic fringes). So in the poem seeing one above would have been a unicorn moment, emphasising the rarity of seeing anything in the sky above the Downs.  

Acknowledgements 

Edward Thomas Field Note Books copyright Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York.

Transcription of the Edward Thomas Field Note Books quoted in this and other posts are available at the Edward Thomas Centre in the Petersfield Museum.

I have also quoted gratefully from:

Edward Thomas The Childhood of Edward Thomas

Edward Thomas Richard Jefferies