There's nothing like the sun

nicholasjdenton
12 minutes ago
9 min read

There's nothing like the sun as the year dies,

Kind as it can be, this world being made so,

To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,

To all things that it touches except snow,

Whether on mountain side or street of town.

The south wall warms me: November has begun,

Yet never shone the sun as fair as now

While the sweet last-left damsons from the bough

With spangles of the morning’s storm drop down

Because the starling shakes it, whistling what

Once swallows sang. But I have not forgot

That there is nothing, too, like March’s sun,

Like April’s, or July’s, or June’s, or May’s,

Or January’s, or February’s, great days:

And August, September, October and December

Have equal days, all different from November.

No day of any month but I have said -

Or, if I could live long enough, should say -

“There’s nothing like the sun that shines today.”

There’s nothing like the sun till we are dead.

The sun is a frequent visitor to Edward Thomas’s notebooks. In the eighty field notebooks he had written when an adult, he had covered the weather in every month many times, and written of the sun and its effects on most days of the year. He was always partial to enjoying a few minutes, or an hour, sitting or lying in the sun - and noticed birds, beasts and insects doing the same. Or he would spot sun light playing on or through the clouds, on leaves, through trees, across near or distant fields or on hills and water. And he would note the glory of its dawn or its setting. Often these descriptions are in minute detail with changes observed minute by minute, hour by hour.

So There’s Nothing Like the Sun was a summation of all of this observation, a celebration of the sun’s unique capability to make the landscape and the skyscape anew and afresh each day.

Hence, as in the poem, all days when the sun shines, even momentarily, are great, all equal and all different, across the months and the year, whether in the long days of summer or the shortened daylight hours of November, December and January.

He wrote his paean of praise to the the sun on November 19th and 20th 1915, when he had just arrived at his new military training camp in Romford, Essex. Previously in September and October he had been stationed at High Beach training camp in Epping Forest, whose landscape had inspired him to write his two other autumn poems, October and Liberty - see separate posts. In between from the end of October to mid November 1915 he was for a brief period based in London for his training and could stay at his parents’ house in Wandsworth during the week. At weekends he was able to get down to Steep more easily than from Essex, and occasionally during this interlude between camps, he could add an extra day or two of leave.

On November 1st 1915, a Monday, he wrote a note about the damsons in his garden: “Sweet as last left damsons on spangled tree when November starling imitates the swallow in sunny interval between rain & all is still & dripping.”

Damsons were a feature of the third home the Thomas family had moved into in Steep in the summer of 1913, Yew Tree Cottage. The trees grew in the hedge of the small garden which would also have beds of vegetables sown by ET. Beyond the hedge lay fields with oak trees and a view up towards the hanging woods of beech, yew and ash of the Ashford hangers.

He had first written about the damsons at Yew Tree Cottage in the Spring of 1914:

“How bright the white damson blossoms in leafless branches agst the dark clouds of N&E when sun is strong in the SW.”

It had clearly been a glorious April day when the new washed linen “bellies out &

somersaults on clothes lines harmoniously with sun bursts or in magnificent contrasts with the dark threats…”

He had further noted: “Sometimes a glorious wide blue with little innocent white after a dark shade - then 100 beautiful illuminations of vale & of tips of Hanger when light comes under cloud from West at 5.”

This could well have been one of the sunlit days he was remembering in particular when writing his later poem.

In the autumn of that year his notes were full of fruit picking. After a day of apple picking on 3rd October, he and his family picked damsons from the hedge top of their garden:

“Many (damsons) shrivelled: others soft, all rather soft but many still plump & bloomy (and come off with their stalks), among the thorny but almost leafless branches - what leaves remain are dulled yellow - but they are mixed with delicate flushed-pink & yellowed hawthorn leaves….

The damson trees surmount the hedge top with a few crooked brittle boughs and many light twigs upright with dark sloes against the sky.”

Later in the month the damsons have been left to the birds:

“Starlings & thrushes taking damsons left on bare tree tops in our hedge - losing many so that they fall off the stalks, whereas the bird likes to get the stalks in its mouth & fly off somewhere to eat at leisure …..: if one falls as it plucks at it it simply hops to another.”

On 27th October 1914 he wrote of a wet start to day before the sun came out: “how pretty our hedge with all its small bramble & thorn leaves coloured, the damson branches above bare & all the rain drops shining & hips glowing & starling whistling thru his teeth in damson top or humming to self so that I can only hear him standing just under tree as he lets me do while he looks up & round.”

Again this feels like a day he was remembering in particular the following year when writing the poem. It also must have been a similar day to November 1st a year later when he heard the starlings imitating the swallows. (In many other notes he wrote of the starlings mimicry - of other birds, of boys whistling or whining, or sounding like the castanets or pipes. They were certainly, in a wide field, one of his favourite birds.)

The starlings featured again the following February in 1915 on a warm hazily blue still afternoon at Yew Tree Cottage when a group of starlings were perched “singly in hedge & talk & chatter & whistle with heads up making a sort of spiky beard under beaks, bubbling throats on damson twigs”.

His note continued: “Sometimes dozens of starlings separately on hedge & in oaks of meadow behind are talking at same time - the sweetest-voiced democratic crowd imaginable." He evidently liked the idea and rephrased it 'The sweetest democracy imaginable".

These starlings were to appear in the first lines of his poem - February Afternoon - written nearly a year later in February 1916.

Returning to the origins of There's nothing like the sun, possibly at the same time or within a few days of the November 1st note he wrote on his leave, on the adjoining page he jotted down two of the key lines he was later to develop for the poem:

“There is nothing like the sun - in January in etc

“While a man lives there’s nothing like the sun”

So There’s nothing like the sun, came from the immediate experience at Yew Tree Cottage earlier in the month, but, like other poems, was also recalling layers of other experience and a life time of observation. Writing the poem at Hare Hall Camp in Essex, he would have reminded himself of his encounters with the starlings and the damsons on sunny days from his earlier notebooks.

In the poem he also added that the south wall warms him. This would have been the wall of Yew Tree Cottage by its front entrance. It’s not a large space but one can imagine Thomas sitting out there during his leave on a chair from the kitchen, leaning against the cottage’s south wall - possibly reading or writing or just smoking a pipe, certainly observing and enjoying the warmth of the November sun.

Walk

A walk from Yew Tree Cottage can be found in the recent post for April. So instead of a walk, I have made a selection of passages from his notebooks describing the sun at different times of the year. These are a small selection - there are many notes in which he described the beauty with which the sun pervades the scene. He described the effect of the sun in many different terms including transformation, transfiguring, benediction or as a dream.

Most of the selection below are from notes written in Steep, including a few about his beloved Shoulder of Mutton Hill.

January Looking South 10am

“Cloudy quiet sky w silver edges & blue wallsbut 1/8 way above S. horizon the clouds (being many & formless) are split & out of this long horizontal slit tumbles the sunlight like a waterfall & transfigures with misty light certain narrow tracks of S ward sloping valley (3 miles off) w trees & white still smoke in it -all very dim, but fine (because sign) nearer me the N ward sloping fields are dull and the trees black: all the lesser hills & curves in the land become clear in the golden mist amg the spokes of this sun: (drawing) smoke lovely folded”.

February

“Sun just risen in cloudy soft streaked sky is like a golden crown lying on a cloth of dark velvet over which gold is spilled - very bright gold but contracted & mist of the sky restricted by it.”

February

“Clear bright morn after frost - no longer freezing - up to Butser & along above E. Meon - at 12 on sunny side of hedge it was warm enough to lie an hour”

March

'2pm Sun hot, (Shoulder of) Mutton olive & steaming (junipers a few still white) & missel thrushes throng on soft warm turf - wood sounding with crisp fall of snow detached by sun. No wind - a bird sings in wood - I think a woodpecker or climber, not a nuthatch. Great clots or suds of snow falling in woods. Stir as if new life in melting thickets & meditative elm/calm?”

May

“A hot corner on top of Mutton where sun is burning smell out of privet leaves & new beech & cowslips - almost a smell of blood so strong is it. The sun too strong & the green fainting in it. “

June

Hot early sun after night of rain — wet hay steaming sweet - pours on corner by yew on Mutton & warms the marjoram & thyme & lotus & lights up the dew - the yew acting as a fruit wall to the warmth - such a hot sweet colour never was made blue sky with melting snow-grey clouds trooping on horizon & now & then large shadows dwelling on the hay & wind rustling the dripping thickets”

June

“The sun stood in the room like a god”

September

“A lot of meadow browns on or about brambles at Cold Corner in the windy sun at 9.30 hovering, alighting on bramble flower amg bees, very disturbed by bees, changing perches, settling on road, on dry grit, & behaving like family of children newly come to a house they like in a strange village, which they don’t yet know the ways of & disregard as yet.

"So sunny & warm here & the air astir with the drabbish butterflies. Why don’t I pause longer; because I shd realise beauty is all, in going on, in life, & can only be touched as it passes - & is beginning to pass when you know it is joy & beauty.”

September

“Then the sun breaks thru all silver bright & the downs are a blue bulk beneath, whether wooded or not & their sheer falls carve the sky - this is in SW & in NE the lower hills receive sudden benediction of light & warmth on glades sunning? up between oak woods & on shining stubble & woodpigeons flying & richest dark brown & milky white cows - but does not penetrate a densest close avenue of small beeches leading mysteriously off the blue gleaming wet road.”

October

5pm

“A wondrous gold-hazy west, w clear still trees agst it, & far-folded hills - sun huge & molten - above, the dark array of clouds have downward golden faces - across the West go towering manes fr SW.

—

“I see sunset thro 2 windows of Lupton’s workshop which appear full of golden haze in which the men work, as I stand outside. This after the first really fine warm bright day - wind falls for sunset.”

“Sunset gives woods a look as if 1000 memories & histories”