Selected Poems

by Edmund Blunden

  That wreathes and swims and soon shuts in our world.

  And those distorted guns, that lay past use,

  Why – miracles not over! – all a firing,

  The rain’s no cloak from their sharp eyes. And you,

  Poor signaller, you I passed by this emplacement,

  You whom I warned, poor dare-devil, waving your flags,

  Among this screeching I pass you again and shudder

  At the lean green flies upon the red flesh madding.

  Runner, stand by a second. Your message. – He’s gone,

  Falls on a knee, and his right hand uplifted

  Claws his last message from his ghostly enemy,

  Turns stone-like. Well I liked him, that young runner,

  But there’s no time for that. O now for the word

  To order us flash from these drowning roaring traps

  And even hurl upon that snarling wire?

  Why are our guns so impotent?

  The grey rain,

  Steady as the sand in an hourglass on this day,

  Where through the window the red lilac looks,

  And all’s so still, the chair’s odd click is noise –

  The rain is all heaven’s answer, and with hearts

  Past reckoning we are carried into night

  And even sleep is nodding here and there.

  The second night steals through the shrouding rain.

  We in our numb thought crouching long have lost

  The mockery triumph, and in every runner

  Have urged the mind’s eye see the triumph to come,

  The sweet relief, the straggling out of hell

  Into whatever burrows may be given

  For life’s recall. Then the fierce destiny speaks.

  This was the calm, we shall look back for this.

  The hour is come; come, move to the relief!

  Dizzy we pass the mule-strewn track where once

  The ploughman whistled as he loosed his team;

  And where he turned home-hungry on the road,

  The leaning pollard marks us hungrier turning,

  We crawl to save the remnant who have torn

  Back from the tentacled wire, those whom no shell

  Has charred into black carcasses – Relief!

  They grate their teeth until we take their room,

  And through the churn of moonless night and mud

  And flaming burst and sour gas we are huddled

  Into the ditches where they bawl sense awake

  And in a frenzy that none could reason calm,

  (Whimpering some, and calling on the dead)

  They turn away: as in a dream they find

  Strength in their feet to bear back that strange whim

  Their body.

  At the noon of the dreadful day

  Our trench and death’s is on a sudden stormed

  With huge and shattering salvoes, the clay dances

  In founts of clods around the concrete sties,

  Where still the brain devises some last armour

  To live out the poor limbs.

  This wrath’s oncoming

  Found four of us together in a pillbox,

  Skirting the abyss of madness with light phrases,

  White and blinking, in false smiles grimacing.

  The demon grins to see the game, a moment

  Passes, and – still the drum-tap dongs my brain

  To a whirring void – through the great breach above me

  The light comes in with icy shock and the rain

  Horridly drips. Doctor, talk, talk! if dead

  Or stunned I know not; the stinking powdered concrete,

  The lyddite turns me sick – my hair’s all full

  Of this smashed concrete. O I’ll drag you, friends,

  Out of the sepulchre into the light of day,

  For this is day, the pure and sacred day.

  And while I squeak and gibber over you,

  Look, from the wreck a score of field-mice nimble,

  And tame and curious look about them. (These

  Calmed me, on these depended my salvation.)

  There comes my sergeant, and by all the powers

  The wire is holding to the right battalion,

  And I can speak – but I myself first spoken

  Hear a known voice now measured even to madness

  Call me by name: ‘For God’s sake send and help us,

  Here in a gunpit, all headquarters done for,

  Forty or more, the nine-inch came right through.

  All splashed with arms and legs, and I myself

  The only one not killed, not even wounded.

  You’ll send – God bless you!’ The more monstrous fate

  Shadows our own, the mind swoons doubly burdened,

  Taught how for miles our anguish groans and bleeds,

  A whole sweet countryside amuck with murder;

  Each moment puffed into a year with death.

  Still wept the rain, roared guns,

  Still swooped into the swamps of flesh and blood,

  All to the drabness of uncreation sunk,

  And all thought dwindled to a moan, – Relieve!

  But who with what command can now relieve

  The dead men from that chaos, or my soul?

  Death of Childhood Beliefs

  There the puddled lonely lane,

  Lost among the red swamp sallows,

  Gleams through drifts of summer rain

  Down to ford the sandy shallows,

  Where the dewberry brambles crane.

  And the stream in cloven clay

  Round the bridging sheep-gate stutters,

  Wind-spun leaves burn silver-grey,

  Far and wide the blue moth flutters

  Over swathes of warm new hay.

  Scrambling boys with mad to-do

  Paddle in the sedges’ hem,

  Ever finding joy anew;

  Clocks toll time out – not for them,

  With what years to frolic through!

  How shall I return and how

  Look once more on those old places!

  For Time’s cloud is on me now

  That each day, each hour effaces

  Visions once on every bough.

  Stones could talk together then,

  Jewels lay for hoes to find,

  Each oak hid King Charles agen,

  Ay, nations in his powdered rind;

  Sorcery lived with homeless men.

  Spider Dick, with cat’s green eyes

  That could pierce stone walls, has flitted –

  By some hedge he shakes and cries,

  A lost man, half-starved, half-witted,

  Whom the very stoats despise.

  Trees on hill-tops then were Palms,

  Closing pilgrims’ arbours in;

  David walked there singing Psalms;

  Out of the clouds white seraphin

  Leaned to watch us fill our bin.

  Where’s the woodman now to tell

  Will o’ the Wisp’s odd fiery anger?

  Where’s the ghost to toll the bell

  Startling midnight with its clangour

  Till the wind seemed but a knell?

  Drummers jumping from the tombs

  Banged and thumped all through the town,

  Past shut shops and silent rooms

  While the flaming spires fell down; –

  Now but dreary thunder booms.

  Smuggler trapped in headlong spate,

  Smuggler’s mare with choking whinney,

  Well I knew your fame, your fate;

  By the ford and shaking spinney

  Where you perished I would wait,

  Half in glory, half in fear,

  While the fierce flood, trough and crest,

  Whirled away the shepherd’s gear,

  And sunset wildfire coursed the west,

  Crying Armageddon near.

  The Canal

  Where so dark and sti
ll

  Slept the water, never changing,

  From the glad sport in the meadows

  Oft I turned me.

  Fear would strike me chill

  On the clearest day in summer,

  Yet I loved to stand and ponder

  Hours together

  By the tarred bridge rail –

  There the lockman’s vine-clad window,

  Mirrored in the tomb-like water,

  Stared in silence

  Till, deformed and pale

  In the sunken cavern shadows,

  One by one imagined demons

  Scowled upon me.

  Barges passed me by,

  With their unknown surly masters

  And small cabins, whereon some rude

  Hand had painted

  Trees and castles high.

  Cheerly stepped the towing horses,

  And the women sung their children

  Into slumber.

  Barges, too, I saw

  Drowned in mud, drowned, drowned long ages,

  Their grey ribs but seen in summer,

  Their names never:

  In whose silted maw

  Swarmed great eels, the priests of darkness,

  Old as they, who came at midnight

  To destroy me.

  Like one blind and lame

  Who by some new sense has vision

  And strikes deadlier than the strongest

  Went this water.

  Many an angler came,

  Went his ways; and I would know them,

  Some would smile and give me greeting,

  Some kept silence –

  Most, one old dragoon

  Who had never a morning hallo,

  But with stony eye strode onward

  Till the water,

  On a silent noon,

  That had watched him long, commanded:

  Whom he answered, leaping headlong

  To self-murder.

  ‘Fear and fly the spell,’

  Thus my Spirit sang beside me;

  Then once more I ranged the meadows,

  Yet still brooded,

  When the threefold knell

  Sounded through the haze of harvest –

  Who had found the lame blind water

  Swift and seeing?

  To Nature (1923)

  The Aftermath

  Swift away the century flies,

  Time has yet the wind for wings,

  In the past the midnight lies;

  But my morning never springs.

  Who goes there? come, ghost or man,

  You were with us, you will know;

  Let us commune, there’s no ban

  On speech for us if we speak low.

  Time has healed the wound, they say,

  Gone’s the weeping and the rain;

  Yet you and I suspect, the day

  Will never be the same again.

  Is it day? I thought there crept

  Some frightened pale rays through the fog,

  And where the lank black ash-trees wept

  I thought the birds were just agog.

  But no, this fiction died before

  The swirling gloom, as soon as seen;

  The thunder’s brow, the thunder’s roar,

  Darkness that’s felt strode swift between.

  O euphrasy for ruined eyes!

  I chose, it seemed, a flowering thorn;

  The white blooms were but brazen lies,

  The tree I looked upon was torn

  In snarling lunacy of pain,

  A brown charred trunk that deadly cowered,

  And when I stared across the plain

  Where once the gladdening green hill towered,

  It shone a second, then the greed

  Of death had fouled it; dark it stood,

  A hump of wilderness untried

  Where the kind Dove would never brood.

  Rural Economy (1917)

  There was winter in those woods,

  And still it was July:

  There were Thule solitudes

  With thousands huddling nigh;

  There the fox had left his den,

  The scraped holes hid not stoats but men.

  To these woods the rumour teemed

  Of peace five miles away;

  In sight, hills hovered, houses gleamed

  Where last perhaps we lay

  Till the cockerels bawled bright morning and

  The hours of life slipped the slack hand.

  In sight, life’s farms sent forth their gear,

  Here rakes and ploughs lay still;

  Yet, save some curious clods, all here

  Was raked and ploughed with a will.

  The sower was the ploughman too,

  And iron seeds broadcast he threw.

  What husbandry could outdo this?

  With flesh and blood he fed

  The planted iron that nought amiss

  Grew thick and swift and red,

  And in a night though ne’er so cold

  Those acres bristled a hundredfold.

  Why, even the wood as well as field

  This ruseful farmer knew

  Could be reduced to plough and tilled,

  And if he planned, he’d do;

  The field and wood, all bone-fed loam,

  Shot up a roaring harvest-home.

  Water Moment

  The silver eel slips through the waving weeds

  And in the tunnelled shining stone recedes;

  The earnest eye surveys the crystal pond

  And guards the cave: the sweet shoals pass beyond.

  The watery jewels that these have for eyes,

  The tiger streaks of him that hindmost plies,

  The red-gold wings that smooth their daring paces,

  The sunlight dancing about their airs and graces,

  Burn that strange watcher’s heart; then the sly brain

  Speaks, all the dumb shoal shrieks, and by the stone

  The silver death writhes with the chosen one.

  The Still Hour

  As in the silent darkening room I lay,

  While winter’s early evening, heavy-paced

  As ploughmen from our swarthy soil, groped on

  From the cold mill upon the horizon hill

  And over paddocks to the neighbouring lodges

  And lay as I, tired out with colourless toil,

  Inert, the lubber fiend, whose puffing drowse

  The moon’s dawn scarce would fret, through the low cloud, –

  When thus at ebb I lay, my silence flowered

  Gently as later bloom into a warm

  Harmonious chiming; like a listener I

  Was hushed. The spirits of remembrance all

  With one consent made music, a flood, a haze,

  A vista all to one ripe blushing blended.

  That summer veil of sweet sound then awhile

  Gave me clear voices, as though from rosy distance

  There had been drifting multitude of song,

  And then the bells each in his round were heard;

  The tower that throned them seen, and even the golden

  Chanticleer that frolicked on its top.

  From my broad murmuring ode there came fair forth

  The cries of playing children on one day,

  At one blue dewy hour, by one loved green;

  And then the brook was tumbling lit like gems

  Down its old sluice, and old boy-heroes stood

  To catch its sparkling stonefish – I heard even

  The cry that hailed the chestnut tench’s downfall

  In the next swim, that strange historic victim.

  From church and pasture, sweetheart and sworn friend,

  From the hill’s hopgrounds to the lowest leas

  In the rook-routed vale, from the blind boy

  Who lived by me to the dwellers in the heath,

  From robins building in the gipsy’s kettle

  Thrown in o
ur hedge, to waterfowl above

  The mouldering mill, distinct and happy now

  Ten thousand singings from my childhood rang.

  And time seemed stealing forward as they sounded,

  The syllables of first delights passed;

  Years that ended childhood with their secret sigh

  Uttered their joys, still longed-for, still enshrined.

  And then what voices? Straight, it seemed, from those,

  While a long age was silent as the grave,

  The utterance passed to that stern course of chances

  That crowded far-off Flanders with ourselves.

  I heard the signallers lead the strong battalion

  With bold songs flying to the breeze like banners,

  The quiet courage once again of Daniells

  By some words built up a fort around me,

  And while the long guns clattered through the towns

  I, rather, heard the clack of market-women,

  The hostel’s gramophone and gay girls fooling,

  And chants in painted churches, and my friend’s

  Lively review of Flemish contraries.

  Or, was not this the green Béthune canal

  And these our shouts, our laughs, our awkward plunges,

  While summer’s day went cloudless to its close?

  There shone the Ancre, red-leafed woods above it,

  The blue speed of its waters swirled through causeways;

  There from his hammock in the apple orchard

  Up sprang old Swain and rallied intruding youngsters.

  The company now fell in, to the very yard,

  And once again marched eager towards the Somme,

  And there, a score of voices leapt again

  After a hare that left her seat in the corn.

  I think I’d know that twinkling field today.

  So in swift succession my still hour

  Heard Flanders voices, in the line direct

  From those of childhood; but at last the host

  In such confusion as nigh stopt my breath