Classic and Contemporary Poetry
PERCH FISHING, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: On the far hill the cloud of thunder grew Last Line: They did together, never more to do. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): England; Landscape; Perch (fish); English | ||||||||
ON the far hill the cloud of thunder grew And sunlight blurred below: but sultry blue Burned yet on the valley water where it hoards Behind the miller's elmen floodgate boards, And there the wasps, that lodge them ill-concealed In the vole's empty house, still drove afield To plunder touchwood from old elvish trees And build their young ones their hutched nurseries; Still creaked the grasshoppers' rasping unison Nor had the whisper through the bennets run Nor weather-wisest bird gone home. How then Should wry eels in the pebbled shallows ken Lightning coming? troubled up they stole To the deep-shadowed sullen waterhole, Among whose warty snags the quaint perch lair. As cunning stole the boy to angle there, Muffling least tread, with no noise balancing through The hangdog alder-boughs his bright bamboo. Down plumbed the shuttled ledger, and the quill On the quicksilver water lay dead still. A sharp snatch, swirling to-fro of the line, He's lost, he's won, with splash and scuffling shine Past the low-lapping brandy-flowers drawn in, The ogling hunchback perch with needled fin. And there beside him one as large as he, Following his hooked mate careless who shall see Or what befall him, close and closer yet, -- The startled boy might take him in his net That folds the other. Slow, while on the clay The other flounces, slow he sinks away. What agony usurps that watery brain For comradeship of twenty summers slain, For such delights below the flashing weir And up the sluice-cut, playing buccaneer Among the minnows; lolling in hot sun When bathing vagabonds had drest and done; Rootling in salty river-moss for meal And straying greaves, when hushed the trundling wheel; Snapping the dapping moth, and with new wonder Prowling through old drowned barges falling asunder. And still a thousand things the whole year through They did together, never more to do. | 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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