Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, CLARE'S GHOST, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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CLARE'S GHOST, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Pitch-dark night shuts in, and the rising gale
Last Line: Lit with a burning deathless discontent.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Ghosts


PITCH-DARK night shuts in, and the rising gale
Is full of the presage of rain,
And there comes a withered wail
From the wainscot and jarring pane,
And a long funeral surge
Like a wood-god's dirge,
Like the wash of the shoreward tides, from the firs on the crest.

The shaking hedges blacken, the last gold flag
Lowers from the West;
The Advent bell moans wild like a witch hag
In the storm's unrest,
And the lychgate lantern's candle weaves a shroud,
And the unlatched gate shrieks loud.

Up fly the smithy sparks, but are baffled from soaring
By the pelting scurry, and ever
As puff the bellows, a multitude more outpouring
Die foiled in the endeavour.

And a stranger stands with me here in the glow
Chinked through the door, and marks
The sparks
Perish in whirlpool wind, and if I go
To the delta of cypress, where the glebe gate cries,
I see him there, with his streaming hair
And his eyes
Piercing beyond our human firmament,
Lit with a burning deathless discontent.





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