Now Far From Home

Second Lieutenant Philip Edward Thomas, Royal Garrison Artillery

And there we were 27 May 2026…upon this place of Agny. I shall be telling this with a sigh ages and ages hence.

I sought this trail when I first learned the poem’s lesson. Here at this portion of Agny…the English friend, of Robert Service rests. Two roads diverged in a [yellow] wood and – perhaps by chance – two separate paths lead to Philip Edward Thomas, lost on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917 serving with the 244th Siege Battery.

And so with two paths a choice was made, do we follow the first or having seen a sign pointing the way to Agny Military Cemetery, do we take the identified trail? We take the second path.

Without Thomas, the Frost poem The Road Not Taken would not have been penned and published August 1915. And now I am here…left within my thoughts…and that has made all the difference.

Philip Edward Thomas was, like Frost, a poet. Within his words we find the feelings of my reflections for my time here in France and Flanders. One wonders the stories that are to follow…one step at a time…

In Memoriam (Easter 1915)

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood.

This Eastertide call into mind the men,

Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should

Have gathered them and will do never again.