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Original Text (Annotation: EAW045805 / 951551)
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Adlestrop Signal Box. The station is out of sight to the bottom left. It was here that Edward Thomas' train made an unscheduled stop on 24 June 1914 inspiring him to write a poem in 1917.
Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name
And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.
And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.
Another literary associations with Adlestrop was the fact that novelist Jane Austen visited the village three Times between 1794 and 1806 and it is said to have inspired her novel Mansfield Park.
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