Dymock: Daffodils and poets by Sheila Johnson

 Welcome to part 2 of my Gloucestershire writers and poets. At this time of year Dymock is a pretty little village in the west of Gloucestershire just 4 miles south of Ledbury. In the springtime it is alive with fields of Daffodils.

At the start of the 19th century, there was still a railway line that linked Dymock with London. The locals would pick the daffodils - even the young children missed school to do this - and the bunches would be sent post haste by rail to London for immediate sale. The daffodils still grace the fields in and near Dymock but now they aren't allowed to be picked, although you can wander through fields of them and enjoy the sight as we did.

This easy access to London also brought a group of poets to the area for a very short while. Collectively these poets have become known as the Georgian or the Dymock poets. 

Lascelles Abercrombie was the first to arrive from Liverpool with his wife and family. A couple of years later his friend Wilfrid Gibson and his wife came to the village. In 1913 Gibson wrote to the American poet, Robert Frost, currently in England with his wife and family, suggesting that he come to Dymock to discover the delights of the English countryside. Frost also settled in a cottage in Dymock. These three poets formed the original group, attracting visiting poets, Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, John Drinkwater, Eleanor Farjeon and W.H Davies. The period of the group being together was very brief, no more than just over the two years 1913-1915, when their camaraderie and mutual inspiration was brought to a sudden end by the advent of the First World War.  Then Brooke died in 1915 from septicaemia and Thomas was killed in battle the same year. Abercrombie volunteered to work in a munitions factory, Gibson joined the Army Service Corps and Frost returned to the US. However, although the poets and writers were together for such a short time, their influence in the area remains strong, with regular walks and talks taking place.  

I will finish with lines from the poet, Gibson, little known or studied now, but lines that suggest the passing or ending of those special two years, the poem is fittingly called 'Before Action'. 

I sit beside the brazier's glow,

And, drowsing in the heat. 

I dream of daffodils that blow,

And lambs that frisk and bleat - 

Black lambs that frolic in the snow

Among the daffodils,

In a far orchard that I know

Beneath the Malvern hills. 

Next year the daffodils will blow

And lambs will frisk and bleat;

But I'll not feel the brazier's glow

Nor any cold or heat.