A spring Harvest
Geoffrey Bache Smith2019

"A Spring Harvest" has been pulled from the pages of history and reformated in a pleasing, easy-to-read font with each poem individually highlighted so that readers can enjoy the works of Smith as Tolkien enjoyed them.

"A Spring Harvest" is a delightful and insightful collection of poems by Geoffrey Bache Smith, a talented poet and very close high school and college friend of J.R.R. Tolkien. Smith’s work shows he enjoyed writing and playing with different poetic forms and his mood varied from serious to whimsical, like with:
"It was all in the Black Countree" :
It was all in the Black Countree,
What time the sweet o' the year should be,
I saw a tree, all gaunt and grey,
As mindful of a winter's day:
And that a lonely bird did sit
Upon the topmost branch of it,
Who to my thought did sweeter sing
Than any minstrel of a king.

Smith and Tolkien, along with classmates Rob Gilson and Christopher Wiseman, formed a semi-secret society where they discussed their artistic interests and the impact each would have on the world. The society regularly met and took tea at the Tea Club and Barrovian Society, near their school. The men named their society T.C.B.S.

The personal bonds they formed through T.C.B.S. lasted their lifetimes. Unfortunately, World War I interrupted college and cut short the lives of Smith and Gilson, both killed in France at the Battle of the Somme. Gilson was shot leading a charge and Smith died of shrapnel wounds a few days later on December 3, 1916. Tolkien had contracted Trench Fever and was evacuated to England days before the battle started, escaping almost certain death.

Tolkien was impressed by Smith’s poems and felt the poetry would be a great help to English society as it recovered from the Great War. He took it upon himself to honor Smith by publishing "A Spring Harvest."

Titre original : A spring Harvest (2019)