Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, EARLY AND LATE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

EARLY AND LATE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: How fondly still the grecian form
Last Line: In easter rays!
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Landscape; English


HOW fondly still the Grecian form,
Young, swift and warm
Is homing here;
Among our British commonwealth
Of farmyard habit, meadow health,
And holt and mere!

When morn discerns our lawny green,
Daphne is seen
Weeping and wild,
Till wiser Phoebus travelling there
Caresses music from her hair
With honour mild.

The brook below the floodgate swirls
For Naiad girls
To talk and play,
And there though chance some labouring-man
Part the dense boughs to dip his can
They dance all day.

We see our black-faced sheep anon
All stare as one
At thickets nigh,
And almost catch the horned and rude
Woodgod at gaze ere satyr-shrewd
He dodges by.

Be apt, lest even while you come
From market-hum
And county trade,
Yon whistling lad should Mercury be
And those fine shorthorns, without fee
By him conveyed!

The country year's an Orpheus tune,
In joyous June
All courting dreams,
Till with cold lips and blue he roves
Half-lost by wintry pits and groves
And hoarse grey streams.

For Persephassa then our eyes
With tired surmise
Search thorned wet haze;
Then there she smiles a-primrosing
Where the flags fly and steeples ring
In Easter rays!





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