# The Sun Used to Shine explained — Poetry > Chapter companion for Poetry by Edward Thomas. ## What happens The speaker recalls peaceful pre-war walks with a companion, where they ignored the future and past, focusing instead on small natural details. The distant war intrudes only at moonrise, but the memory of those walks now fades like everything else under the tide of time. ## Themes in this chapter ### Memory and Time The entire poem is a meditation on how memory fades like sand under the tide, and how past walks and talks dissolve into the present. ### War and Mortality The war is a distant but persistent presence, contrasting with the idyllic natural scenes and ultimately consuming the memory of peace. ### Nature and the Seasons Detailed imagery of apples, betonies, crocuses, and the moonlit landscape anchors the poem in the natural world. ## Character check-ins ### Unknown The speaker who reminisces about walks before the war. ### Walker The companion with whom the speaker walked, though not explicitly named, the context of shared walks aligns with Walker's presence. ## Key lines > The sun used to shine while we two walked Slowly together, paused and started Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked As either pleased, and cheerfully parted Each night. We used to walk together in the sunshine, pausing and resuming, chatting or thinking as we wished, and parting happily each evening. _Establishes the idyllic, unhurried routine of the walks._ > We turned from men or poetry To rumours of the war remote Only till both stood disinclined For aught but the yellow flavorous coat Of an apple wasps had undermined; We shifted our attention from people or literature to distant war news, but only until we lost interest and focused instead on a wasp-eaten apple's fragrant skin. _Shows how the war was a fleeting topic, easily overshadowed by immediate natural details._ > The war Came back to mind with the moonrise Which soldiers in the east afar Beheld then. The war returned to our thoughts as the moon rose, the same moon that soldiers far to the east were also watching. _Connects the peaceful walk to the distant reality of war through the shared moon._ > Everything To faintness like those rumours fades— Like the brook’s water glittering Under the moonlight—like those walks Now—like us two that took them, and The fallen apples, all the talks And silences—like memory’s sand When the tide covers it late or soon, Everything fades away like those distant rumors—like the moonlit brook, like our walks now, like the two of us who took them, the fallen apples, every conversation and silence—like sand on a beach that the tide eventually covers. _Central metaphor for the erasure of memory and the passage of time._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/the-sun-used-to-shine - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters