# Words explained — Poetry > Chapter companion for Poetry by Edward Thomas. ## What happens The speaker addresses English words themselves, praising their dual nature—light yet tough, precious yet familiar—and asks to be chosen as a vessel for their expression, drawing on the landscapes and villages of England and Wales for inspiration. ## Themes in this chapter ### Language and Poetry The entire chapter is a meditation on the nature of words and the poet's relationship with language. ### Place and Belonging The speaker invokes specific English and Welsh locales (Wales, Wiltshire, Kent, Herefordshire) as sources of sweetness and meaning. ## Character check-ins ### Unknown The speaker who pleads with English words to choose him as their instrument. ## Key lines > Words Out of us all That make rhymes, Will you choose Sometimes— As the winds use A crack in a wall Or a drain, Their joy or their pain To whistle through— Choose me, You English words? The speaker asks English words to select him as their channel, just as the wind uses any opening to express itself. _Opening plea establishing the poem's central metaphor._ > You are light as dreams, Tough as oak, Precious as gold, As poppies and corn, Or an old cloak: Sweet as our birds To the ear, As the burnet rose In the heat Of Midsummer Words are simultaneously delicate and strong, valuable and ordinary, sweet and familiar. _Series of similes describing the paradoxical qualities of language._ > Strange as the races Of dead and unborn: Strange and sweet Equally, And familiar, To the eye, As the dearest faces That a man knows, And as lost homes are Words are both alien and intimate, like the faces of loved ones or memories of home. _Contrast between strangeness and familiarity in language._ > Make me content With some sweetness From Wales Whose nightingales Have no wings— From Wiltshire and Kent And Herefordshire, And the villages there— From the names, and the things No less. The speaker asks to be satisfied with the sweetness found in the names and places of rural England and Wales. _Invocation of specific regions as sources of poetic contentment._ > Let me sometimes dance With you, Or climb Or stand perchance In ecstasy, Fixed and free In a rhyme, As poets do. The speaker desires to move with words in a state of poetic rapture, both constrained and liberated by rhyme. _Final request for the transcendent experience of writing poetry._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters/words - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/poetry_5_se/chapters