# If I Were to Own explained — Poetry

> Chapter companion for Poetry by Edward Thomas.

## What happens

The speaker imagines owning a vast countryside with many named estates and features, and considers giving them all to his son in exchange for a single blackbird's song at dawn. The fantasy turns dark as he envisions shooting all the blackbirds, leaving himself old and alone, and then needing to pay rent with a song as sweet as a blackbird's or lose the house.

## Themes in this chapter

### Place and Belonging

The detailed naming of Essex estates and features emphasizes a deep connection to the land and the idea of ownership.

### Solitude and Reflection

The speaker's imagined future of being 'old and alone' after destroying the blackbirds highlights a solitary and reflective consequence.

## Character check-ins

### Unknown

The speaker who imagines owning the land and bargaining with his son.

### The Winter Thrush

Referenced as the thrush whose songs are 'proverbs untranslatable' in the hedges.

## Key lines

> If I were to own this countryside As far as a man in a day could ride

If I possessed all the land a person could travel across in a single day on horseback.

_Opens the poem with a hypothetical wish for vast ownership._

> I would give them all to my son If he would let me any one For a song, a blackbird’s song, at dawn.

I would hand over all these estates to my son if he would allow me to keep just one thing: a blackbird's song at dawn.

_Expresses the speaker's willingness to trade material wealth for a simple natural pleasure._

> He should have no more, till on my lawn Never a one was left, because I Had shot them to put them into a pie⁠— His Essex blackbirds, every one, And I was left old and alone.

He would have nothing left until I had shot every blackbird on my lawn to make a pie, leaving me old and solitary.

_Reveals a dark turn where the speaker destroys the very thing he valued._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/if-i-were-to-own
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters