Explore "The New Year" by Edward Thomas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
He was the one man I met up in the woods That stormy New Year's morning; and at first sight, Fifty yards off, I could not tell how much Of the strange tripod was a man. His body, Bowed horizontal, was supported equally By legs at one end, by a rake at the other:
Thus he rested, far less like a man than His wheel-barrow in profile was like a pig.
But when I saw it was an old man bent, At the same moment came into my mind The games at which boys bend thus, High-Cockalorum, Or Fly-the-garter, and Leap-frog. At the sound Of footsteps he began to straighten himself;
His head rolled under his cape like a tortoise's;
He took an unlit pipe out of his mouth Politely ere I wished him "A Happy New Year,"
And with his head cast upward sideways muttered -- So far as I could hear through the trees' roar -- "Happy New Year, and may it come fastish, too,"
While I strode by and he turned to raking leaves.