Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RUSTIC WREATH, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RUSTIC WREATH, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: With may's tomthumb and daisy come
Last Line: And only earth's rude rustic here.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Country Life; England; Landscape; English


With May's tomthumb and daisy come,
With May's moondaisy countless come,
I take my ease upon the heath
And of my pleasures tie my wreath.

I take my ease; and yet I meet
A bitter prelude to much sweet:
The cat skulks close as hare in fourm,
Bounds away at mischief's speed;
I find her grassy ambush warm
Where feathers small convict her greed:
I wish, a mischief end such bliss
Or them that starve her into this.

But now the cottage chimneys fail
To overpeer the happier vale:
See lively frog come down the track,
Blotched like dead leaves his yellow back,
And eyes like gems in black chaps set --
A finer gipsy I never met:
Then in the velvet paddock, while
Through amber rain the sunbeams smile,
The cows in all their white and red,
As though of Zion's pasture bred!

What roses and what elders flower!
For mating birds how many a bower!
Without a care, here in the way,
A butterfly dreams life away,
Then in a terror at my tread
Shuts to a leaf or twig that's dead,
And on his wings my love descries
Those beauty-spots like little eyes.

Here once a cottage was, it looks,
Here yet its fruit-trees shield love-nooks,
Its well's pure-watered diamond;
That rose-bush twinkling pink beyond
A whole day's counting has put forth
Her buds and swells the natural mirth
Of a warm corner where the sun
Shines as he only loved that one.

So, if this hour were now to grow
An age, this humble haunt would glow
With a contenting paradise,
Though never through the sunlight rise
Those crystal towers and souls of trees
And mounts of gold that fancy sees;
Though there the heavenly rose appear,
And only earth's rude rustic here.





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