Classic and Contemporary Poetry
LA QUINQUE RUE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: O road in dizzy moonlight bleak and blue Last Line: To trim roofs and cropped fields; the error's mine. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): World War I; First World War | ||||||||
O ROAD in dizzy moonlight bleak and blue, With forlorn effigies of farms besprawled, With trees bitterly bare or snapped in two, Why riddle me thus -- attracted and appalled? For surely now the grounds both left and right Are tilled, and scarless houses undismayed Glow in the lustrous mercy of sweet night And one may hear the flute or fiddle played. Why lead me then Through the foul-gorged, the cemeterial fen To fear's sharp sentries? Why do dreadful rags Fur these bulged banks, and feebly move to the wind? That battered drum, say why it clacks and brags? Another and another! what's behind? How is it that these flints flame out fire's tongue, Shrivelling my thought? these collapsed skeletons, What are they, and these iron hunks among? Why clink those spades, why glare these startling suns And topple to the wet and crawling grass, Where the strange briars in taloned hedges twine? What need of that stopped tread, that countersign? O road, I know those muttering groups you pass. I know your way of turning blood to glass. But, I am told, to-night you safely shine To trim roofs and cropped fields; the error's mine. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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