Edward Thomas's poetry is made out of a haunted and restless temper compounded by a life that gave him no rest. R. George Thomas commented:

Financial harassment and sheer fatigue intensified his innate darkness of temper. Weariness is a recurring theme; in The Icknield Way he writes: ‘There will never be any summer any more, and I am weary of everything. I stay because I am too weak to go, I crawl on because it is easier than to stop.’ Relations with his family were often strained, and, too inwardly troubled to settle to a permanent job, he travelled ceaselessly about the countryside of England and Wales, in what was really an inner quest, for the rest and fulfilment he could never find.