"The Poetry Of Almost Infinitely-Qualified States Of Mind": Philip Larkin And Edward Thomas

As I have noted before, I believe that Philip Larkin was very astute in his assessments of other poets.  An excellent instance of this occurs in a letter that Larkin wrote to the poet Andrew Motion after being asked by him to review a typescript of his study of Edward Thomas.  (The study was eventually published in 1980 as The Poetry of Edward Thomas.)

Larkin admired Thomas's poetry, and on at least two occasions he stated that a volume of Thomas's poems was one of the dozen or so books that he kept close at hand near his desk.  In his letter to Motion, after making some critical comments about Motion's typescript, Larkin turns to Thomas himself:

"What a strange talent his was:  the poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind, so well paralleled by his verse."

Philip Larkin, Letter to Andrew Motion (May 16, 1979), Selected Letters of Philip Larkin (1992).

This is, I think, an extremely perceptive observation about a key feature of Thomas's personality and of his poetry.  After making his comment, Larkin does not refer to any particular poems by Thomas.  However, I will offer the following poem as one example of what Larkin may have been getting at (please note the final stanza):

                              For These

An acre of land between the shore and the hills,
Upon a ledge that shows my kingdoms three,
The lovely visible earth and sky and sea,
Where what the curlew needs not, the farmer tills:

A house that shall love me as I love it,
Well-hedged, and honoured by a few ash-trees
That linnets, greenfinches, and goldfinches
Shall often visit and make love in and flit:

A garden I need never go beyond,
Broken but neat, whose sunflowers every one
Are fit to be the sign of the Rising Sun:
A spring, a brook's bend, or at least a pond:

For these I ask not, but, neither too late
Nor yet too early, for what men call content,
And also that something may be sent
To be contented with, I ask of fate.

Edward Thomas, The Annotated Collected Poems (edited by Edna Longley) (2008).

Of course, Larkin could be said to have himself written "the poetry of almost infinitely-qualified states of mind."  Consider (one among many possible examples) the closing stanzas of "Mr Bleaney":

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings (Faber and Faber 1964).

             Algernon Newton, "The Surrey Canal, Camberwell" (1935)