A year before he died at Arras, Edward Thomas wrote "Tall Nettles"—eight lines about some old farm tools going under the nettles. He declined to feel sorry for them. That refusal is the poem. Faced with something neglected, most of us feel the same reflex. A derelict building, an overgrown garden, machinery going green at the edges. We assume it has fallen from a better state, and that the proper response is to restore it or to mourn it. Pity Arrives Before Thought Does Two p