Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE GIANT PUFFBALL, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE GIANT PUFFBALL, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: From what proud star I know not, but I found
Last Line: Be but as crouching dust and wind-blown sand.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Landscape; Puffballs; English


From what proud star I know not, but I found
Myself newborn below the coppice rail,
No bigger than the dewdrops and as round,
In a soft sward, no cattle might assail.

And here 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 agen,
The moon my sibyl worshipped through the night,
The sun returned and long revered: 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 agen after an age of cold,
And hung me in the prison-house a-dry
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.




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