A Private

By Edward Thomas

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors

Many a frozen night, and merrily

Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:

"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,

"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,

Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down

In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps

More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.