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Edmund Charles Blunden Quotes

1896–1974 England

Edmund Charles Blunden (November 1, 1896 – January 20, 1974) was an English poet, author and critic. Although not one of the top trio of English World War I writers, his works exerted important influence.

England
Critics
Poets

Also known as: Blunden, Edmund Charles, Edmund Blunden

Random Edmund Charles Blunden quote

16 quotes

The field and wood, all bone-fed loam,
Set up a roaring harvest-home.

I am for the woods against the world,
But are the woods for me?

Can she who shines so calm be fear?
What poison pours she in slumber's ear?

Cricket to us, like you, was more than play,
It was a worship in the summer sun.

Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan,
Use him as though you love him;
Court him, elude him, reel and pass,
And let him hate you through the glass.

Old farm-houses with their white faces
Fly, and their ghosts have taken their places;
Even the signposts like grim liars
Point to losing brakes and briars.

This was my country, and it may be yet,
But something flew between me and the sun.

Then is not Death at watch
Within those secret waters?
What wants he but to catch
Earth’s heedless sons and daughters?
With but a crystal parapet
Between, he has his engines set.

At Quincy's moat the squandering village ends,
And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends
Of all the village, two old dames that cling
As close as any trueloves in the spring.

Australia once produced poets who were English poets a little out of touch; now she has her own; and O'Reilly with ball in hand is quite the parallel of an Australian poet, territorially distinct in rhythm, passion, scheme and transition.

Cricket Country (1944)

I have been young, and now am not too old;
And I have seen the righteous forsaken,
His health, his honour and his quality taken.
This is not what we were formerly told.

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.

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.

I saw the sunlit vale, and the pastoral fairy-tale;
The sweet and bitter scent of the may drifted by;
And never have I seen such a bright bewildering green.
But it looked like a lie,
Like a kindly meant lie.

The hop-poles stand in cones,
The icy pond lurks under,
The pole-tops steeple to the thrones
Of stars, sound gulfs of wonder;
But not the tallest there, ’tis said,
Could fathom to this pond’s black bed.

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,
Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Charles Blunden (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.