Classic and Contemporary Poetry
KINGFISHER, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The eastern god with natural blessing gleams Last Line: The kingfisher returns. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): England; Kingfishers; Landscape; English | ||||||||
THE eastern God with natural blessing gleams Upon our temple of another faith, And wakes our world; our hills, our streams, Farms, anvils all begin afresh. Each wraith That even in this sweet glade Clings with the bat and moth below night's covert shade Is sent away; fast flit the shoal Of water-ghosts, they end their white patrol Of foam-flowered whirlpools; none deny That ancient, sharp, and fearless Eye. Yet here, as morning takes in her young hands The lilies, and to gild her coloured bands Desires those sunny flashes from the swim Of naiad-ripples over the warm sands, Or where the wave looks cherry-ripe or blue In its fair answer to the flowery shore, An eye peers through The willow-lattice, capturing much more My fancy; while on that green farther ledge The gray mare bites the alder and cool sedge, This eye across the wide clear river burns, And in the rosy glass of bloom discerns. Then sapphire lightning falls, the waters burst, The lightning leaps reversed, And with his eye's quick distant prize The kingfisher returns. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NINETEEN FORTY by NORMAN DUBIE GHOSTS IN ENGLAND by ROBINSON JEFFERS STAYING UP FOR ENGLAND by LIAM RECTOR STONE AND FLOWER by KENNETH REXROTH THE HANGED MAN by KENNETH REXROTH ENGLISH TRAIN COMPARTMENT by JOHN UPDIKE ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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