Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ESTRANGEMENT, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN



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THE ESTRANGEMENT, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Dim through cloud vails the moonlight trembles down
Last Line: Shrills malice at the soul grown strange in france.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): France; World War I; First World War


DIM through cloud vails the moonlight trembles down
A cold grey vapour on the huddling town;
And far from cut-throat's corner the eye sees
Unsilvered hogs'-backs, pallid stubble-leas;
Barn-ridges gaunt and gleamless: blue like ghosts
The knoll mill and the odd cowls of the oasts,
And lonely homes pondering with joys and fears
The dusty travail of three hundred years.

In the ashen twilight momently afield,
Like thistle-wool wafting across the weald,
Flickers a sighing spirit; as he passes,
The lispering aspens and the scarfed brook grasses
With wakened melancholy writhe the air.

In the false moonlight wails my old despair,
And I am but a pipe for its wild moan;
Crying through the misty bypaths; slumber-banned;
Impelled and voiced, to piercing coronach blown:

A hounded kern in this grim No Man's Land,
I am spurned between the secret countersigns
Of every little grain of rustling sand
In these parched lanes where the grey wind maligns;
Oaks, once my friends, with ugly murmurings
Madden me, and ivy whirs like condor wings:
The very bat that stoops and whips askance
Shrills malice at the soul grown strange in France.





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