Letter from Edward Thomas to the poet Gordon Bottomley. Sent from Wick Green, Petersfield, Hampshire. Archival ref: 424/1/1/1/10/147
WICK GREEN
PETERSFIELD

22 iv 10

My dear Gordon,

Thank you for answering a question that
must have looked inept & rather like that of a
Daily Mail special correspondent. I really wanted
to hope my own surmises strengthened or shattered
you to see strengthened again specially by your
remark that all poems are love poems? which
is almost exactly what I had hit upon myself
in one of my cloudy cogitations on the whole
vast vague question. I shall keep your letter by
me & reproduce it curiously or unconsciously,
literally or in digested form. Thank you.
Where does May Possetti speak of his brother's
method
I am still without plans & of course difficulties
diverse. I have been examining the poem &
letters etc of Keats, Landor, Wordsworth & Donne.

I don't know yet if I can dare touch the Provencal &
Italian poets. Is there any translation of
Petrarch that is like poetry or like Petrarch?
I have still to thank you for an earlier letter
chiefly about Maeterlinck. Your suggestion that
I should look at Sharp's "Vistas" is a likely one.
I read the book once & forgot it. I believe it might
provoke something.

It would take too long - time is money
for an illpaid author! - to bring up all the
possible forces against 'dancing spring' It is merely that in its context 'dancing'' has no
effect upon my mind save as a conspicuous
word which I can only connect with 'Spring'
by such an effort as would destroy any aesthetic
value in it. I don't think that Moore proves that
if he had stood on Blake with a birch he would
have made a better artist of him though he might
have made a less troublesome one.
Thank you for a promise of Rosemary &
we would like some Peruvian Lliy & Larkspur seed.
The Larkspur is easy to get but I should like some of
yours & Cartmel's.
Ever your hurried & harried prose man
Edward Thomas