Classic and Contemporary Poetry
DEAD LETTERS (T.L.H.), by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: There lay the letters of a hundred friends Last Line: Seemed friends that we had always known. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): Friendship; Poetry & Poets | ||||||||
THERE lay the letters of a hundred friends Of one whose name and years -- what else? -- we knew; Unordered, faded, past and gone, Mere script that chance had let live on. Now through this chaos of sad nothing-worth, Of unknown moods and matters dead so long, We'll look, we said, for any trace Of those his friends whom years but grace. And hurrying over pages thick as leaves In Vallombrosa, now with surprised hush We met with Mary Shelley's name, Tumultuous for her dead Love's fame. Nor without trembling could we lay our hand To that remorseless parchment which recalled Poor Harriet staring on the cold Oblivious water, deathly bold. How often, fine as this his silvered hair, Appeared the charactery of Shelley's friend, That friend for whom the Ariel gay Went fleeting on a fatal day! The face of Keats glowed out awhile, and Lamb Seemed never far, the darling of our race; And here the tired heroic soul Of Landor lit a homely scroll; And later names which England's genius bore, Writ by the men, flashed out on our survey; And Muse and State we chose in pride From the great throng we cast aside. We cast aside! poor relics, chill and dumb, That told us nothing, seemed the chaff that time With his great tempest might have hurled, And no grain lost, from this wide world. But scanning here more closely, at the last We found our thoughts in these unknowns drawn down To comprehend the hopes and fears, The wrongs and harms that loosed these tears; The half-starved fingers at their drudgeries, The brain in fever and endeavouring still, The unechoed songs in beauty's praise, The affection urged in darkest days; And more and more these nameless annals clutched The hasty hand, the heart, till a hundred ghosts Of men unlauded, past and gone, Seemed friends that we had always known. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS by ROBERT HASS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AS A SONG by ROBERT HASS THE FATALIST: TIME IS FILLED by LYN HEJINIAN OXOTA: A SHORT RUSSIAN NOVEL: CHAPTER 192 by LYN HEJINIAN LET ME TELL YOU WHAT A POEM BRINGS by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA JUNE JOURNALS 6/25/88 by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA FOLLOW ROZEWICZ by JUAN FELIPE HERRERA HAVING INTENDED TO MERELY PICK ON AN OIL COMPANY, THE POEM GOES AWRY by HICOK. BOB ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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