The Giant Puff-Ball-Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

The Giant Puff-Ball

From what sad star I know not, but I found

Myself new-born below the coppice rail,

No bigger than the dewdrops and as round,

In a soft sward, no cattle might assail.

And so I gathered mightiness and grew

With this one dream kindling in me, that I

Should never cease from conquering light and dew

Till my white splendour touched the trembling sky.

A century of blue and stilly light

Bowed down before me, the dew came again,

The moon my sibyl worshipped through the night,

The sun returned and long abode; but then

Hoarse drooping darkness hung me with a shroud

And switched at me with shrivelled leaves in scorn.

Red morning stole beneath a grinning cloud,

And suddenly clambering over dike and thorn

A half-moon host of churls with flags and sticks

Hallooed and hurtled up the partridge brood,

And Death clapped hands from all the echoing thicks,

And trampling envy spied me where I stood;

Who haled me tired and quaking, hid me by,

And came again after an age of cold,

And hung me in the prison-house adry

From the great crossbeam. Here defiled and old

I perish through unnumbered hours, I swoon,

Hacked with harsh knives to staunch a child's torn hand;

And all my hopes must with my body soon

Be but as crouching dust and wind-blown sand

.--Edmund Blunden

Perch Fishing-Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

Pickrel Perch

Perch Fishing

On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew

And sunlight blurred below; but sultry blue

Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards

Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards,

And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed

In the vole's empty house, still drove afield

To plunder touchwood from old crippled trees

And build their young ones their hutched nurseries;

Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison

Nor had the whisper through the tansies run

Nor weather-wisest bird gone home.

How then

Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken

Lightning coming? troubled up they stole

To the deep-shadowed sullen water-hole,

Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair.

As cunning stole the boy to angle there,

Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through

The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo.

Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill

On the quicksilver water lay dead still.

A sharp snatch, swirling to-fro of the line,

He's lost, he's won, with splash and scuffling shine

Past the low-lapping brandy-flowers drawn in,

The ogling hunchback perch with needled fin.

And there beside him one as large as he,

Following his hooked mate, careless who shall see

Or what befall him, close and closer yet —

The startled boy might take him in his net

That folds the other.

Slow, while on the clay,

The other flounces, slow he sinks away.

What agony usurps that watery brain

For comradeship of twenty summers slain,

For such delights below the flashing weir

And up the sluice-cut, playing buccaneer

Among the minnows; lolling in hot sun

When bathing vagabonds had drest and done;

Rootling in salty flannel-weed for meal

And river shrimps, when hushed the trundling wheel;

Snapping the dapping moth, and with new wonder

Prowling through old drowned barges falling asunder.

And O a thousand things the whole year through

They did together, never more to do

--Edmund Blunden. 

The Survival Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

The Survival

To-day’s house makes to-morrow’s road;

I knew these heaps of stone

When they were walls of grace and might,

The country’s honour, art’s delight

That over fountain’d silence show’d

Fame’s final bastion.

Inheritance has found fresh work,

Disunion union breeds;

Beauty the strong, its difference lost,

Has matter fit for flood and frost.

Here’s the true blood that will not shirk

Life’s new-commanding needs.

With curious costly zeal, O man,

Raise orrery and ode;

How shines your tower, the only one

Of that especial site and stone!

And even the dream’s confusion can

Sustain to-morrow’s road.

--Edmund Blunden

The Child's Grave-Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

The Child's Grave

I came to the churchyard where pretty Joy lies

On a morning in April, a rare sunny day;

Such bloom rose around, and so many birds' cries

That I sang for delight as I followed the way.

I sang for delight in the ripening of spring,

For dandelions even were suns come to earth;

Not a moment went by but a new lark took wing

To wait on the season with melody's mirth.

Love-making birds were my mates all the road,

And who would wish surer delight for the eye

Than to see pairing goldfinches gleaming abroad

Or yellowhammers sunning on paling and sty?

And stocks in the almswomen's garden were blown,

With rich Easter roses each side of the door;

The lazy white owls in the glade cool and lone

Paid calls on their cousins in the elm's chambered core.

This peace, then, and happiness thronged me around.

Nor could I go burdened with grief, but made merry

Till I came to the gate of that overgrown ground

Where scarce once a year sees the priest come to bury.

Over the mounds stood the nettles in pride,

And, where no fine flowers, there kind weeds dared to wave;

It seemed but as yesterday she lay by my side,

And now my dog ate of the grass on her grave.

He licked my hand wondering to see me muse so,

And wished I would lead on the journey or home,

As though not a moment of spring were to go

In brooding; but I stood, if her spirit might come

And tell me her life, since we left her that day

In the white lilied coffin, and rained down our tears;

But the grave held no answer, though long I should stay;

How strange that this clay should mingle with hers!

So I called my good dog, and went on my way;

Joy's spirit shone then in each flower I went by,

And clear as the noon, in coppice and ley,

Her sweet dawning smile and her violet eye! 

--Edmund Blunden

The Pike-Edmund Blunden 1896-1974

IN CANADA

From shadows of rich oaks outpeer

The moss-green bastions of the weir,

Where the quick dipper forages

In elver-peopled crevices.

And a small runlet trickling down the sluice

Gossamer music tires not to unloose.

Else round the broad pool's hush

Nothing stirs.

Unless sometime a straggling heifer crush

Through the thronged spinney where the pheasant

whirs;

Or martins in a flash

Come with wild mirth to dip their magical wings; 

While in the shallow some doomed bulrush swings

At whose hid root the diver vole's teeth gnash.

And nigh this toppling reed,still as the dead

The great pike lies, the muderous patriarch

Watching the waterpit shelving and dark,

Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread.

The rose-finned roach and bluish bream

And staring ruffe steal up the stream

Hard by their glutted tyrant now

Still as a sunken bough.

He on the sandbank lies,

Sunning himself long hours

With stony gorgon eyes: 

Westward the hot sun lowers.

Sudden the gray pike charges, and quivering 

poises for slaughter;

Intense terror wakens around him, the shoals scud

away, but there chances

A chub unsuspecting; the prowling fins quicken,

in fury he lances;

And the miller that opens the hatch stands amazed at 

the whirl in the water.

--Edmund Blunden

The Barn-Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

Rain-sunken roof, grown green and thin
For  sparrows' nests and starlings' nests;
Dishevelled eaves; unwieldy doors,
Cracked rusty pump, and oaken floors,
And idly-pencilled names and jests
Upon the posts within.

The light pales at the spider's lust,
The wind tangs through the shattered pane:
An empty hop-poke spreads across
The gaping frame to mend the loss
And keeps out sun as well as rain,
Mildewed with clammy dust.

The smell of apples stored in hay
And homely cattle-cake is there.
Use and disuse have come to terms,
The walls are hollowed out by worms,
But men's feet keep the mid-floor bare
And free from worse decay.

All mery noise of hens astir
Or sparrows squabbling on the roof
Comes to the baarn's broad open door;
You hear upon the barn's broad open door;
You hear upon the staable floor
Old hungry Dapple strike his hoof,
And the blue fan-tails whir.

The baarn is old, and very old,
But not a place of spectral fear.
Cobwebs and dust and speckling sun
Come to old buildings every one.
Long since they made their dwelling here,
And here you may behold

Nothing but simple wane and change;
Your tread will wake no ghost, your voice
Will fall in silence undeterred.
No phantom wailing will be heard,
 Only the faarm's blithe cheerful noise;
The barn is old, not strange.
--Edmund Blunden

Forefathers-Edmund Blunden (1896-1974)

To my father, grandfather.
         My forefathers all.

Here they went with smock and crook,
Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,
Here they mudded out the brook,
And here their hatchet cleared the glade:
Harvest-supper woke their wit,
Huntsman's moon their wooings lit.

From this church they led their brides,
From this church themselves were led
Shoulder-high; on these waysides
Sat to take their beer and bread.
Names are gone--what men they were
These their cottages declare.

Names are vanished, save the few
In the old brown Bible scrawled;
These were men of pith and thew,
Whom the city never called;
Scarce could read or hold a quill,
Built the barn;, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watched their sons
Playing till too dark to see,
As their fathers watched them once,
As my father once watched me;
While bat and beetle flew
On the warm air webbed with dew.

Unrecorded, unrenowned,
Men from whom my ways begin,
Here I know you by your ground,
But I know you not within--
All is mist, and there survives
Not a moment of your lives.

Like the bee that now is blown
Honey-heavy on my hand,
From the toppling tansy-throne
In the green tempestuous land,--
I'm in clover now, nor know
Who made honey long ago.