Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE GODS OF THE EARTH BENEATH, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I am the god of things that burrow and creep Last Line: And then's the end of all her mirth. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): Animals | ||||||||
I AM the god of things that burrow and creep, Slow-worms and glow-worms, mouldwarps working late, Emmets and lizards, hollow-haunting toads, Adders and effets, groundwasps ravenous: The weasel does me homage rustical, And even surly badger and brown fox Are faithful in a thousand things to me. From these and myriads more Hark to the praises murmurously abroad, This very slumbrous sound of glowing noon, All through the low-shorn grass: The morning hedger with his brishing-hook, That never saw me, knows me to be near To greet the greetings of my tiny folk. Six brothers too I have, gods like to me, Whose sort I will declare: and maybe you, Wayweary traveller, with your broad bright eyes, That well can reverence us the lesser gods, Shall see themselves anon. And first of him who, but for me, were least. He has dominion over every plant That stretches tapering root, or twists a mass Of thrusting fibres white as bleachen bones, Or sends long straying creepers: his are roots Of every tree: and such love waits on him, And such free faithfulness that all trees give, That some bow down their green boughs worshipping So that they touch the ground, and you may see In yonder avenue of limes, how some Have hidden down-curved branches in the earth, For him; and so delightful is his care That the lopped tree, be it but stub or stock, Thrives, and begems its leafits in a year. Even the pales that husbandmen set up Have put forth roots -- so kindly is his care, Shown to his worshippers. Sir, tell me whether you at any time Have seen a river-god (since your clear heart Keeps your eyes clear to glimpse all things that few May see)? Ay, you have seen a river-god, Dear honest man of strong simplicity; Then have you spied in summer, when the weeds Thicken and lazily swelter to the sun, In some clear water that the stonefish love One moving softly in a dream of good In form like this of mine? He is my brother, fifth among the gods: He holds the river-beds and watersands In fee: there is no yellow or blue clay Paving a river's travel, no flat rock On which deep waters tarry, no gold sand Of shallows with the shealings shining white, But it is consecrate of old to him, And with it all its creatures honour him -- All fishes, save the fierce unfaithful eel That climbs flood gates and travels through wet fields From pool to pool; or down to the sea's wild works, Slides past a thousand eyots lovelessly. The shells that lie along the paven strand When summer shrinks the water -- think you these Were clustered by the winter's heaping floods? Not so could they entangle sunset pink In crystal frail depicturing within: Not so could I read words of lovely say. But they were tinted with the god's own hand, The god's own hand set them in charactery. He hollows the green bank, knit with sinewy roots, That fish may haven there when too clear suns Have made them languish: for he loves them well. Therefore, when thunder spreads his pirate flag, Black, threatening crime, and up the shallow comes Some eel as thick as any reaper's wrist, He roves the reeds and tramples up the sands In warning to the fishes young and small; And hence the small-eyed eel is led astray Thinking to see the pike his enemy. Such is the river-god. And fourth among us, not unlike to him, Living amid the dead calm of deep waters Of sullen lakes and pits (unfathomable, By all the peasants' tales) there is a god Of white and golden water-lily pageants. The languorous water-lily, that some call clote, Through his perpetual labourings, can climb Up from the silt, that flees the light of day, Still striving and still striving up to air, Proclaiming beauty out of common things To those that pass. What queen more queenly is? What love more lovely than the slumbrous clote, Lingering along the blue stream's mooned curves? Most worthy she the endeavour of a god. And with such beauty ever in desire Her god is pleased to live nigh undescried Deep down: yet you shall see him of a morn Shapen like mist, a little lovely form, Hovering above the sleeping lilies: then The great sun strides on, frighting the pearl mists, And with them flees the lily-god away. Up on the hill, where brambling hops are now Near firm enow for picking, men have found Gold pieces lying bedded in the earth, Trinkets of other centuries, treasure trove; Nor this without its god, the miner god. To whom all buried coins, all precious things, All strakes of gold and silver amid rocks, All porphyries, agates, emeralds, starry stones Are known and charted. From his treasuries He thins frail gold for crowns of daffodil, And inlays silver leaves for ladysmocks. With rubies is his palace underground Windowed, to let the cavern's twilight in; Of alabaster are his buttresses, Of pallid mica are his little doors, And all the walls of gold, the walks of gold. So silver-sandalled down those golden ways He triumphs, and his people cry his praise, Even the jewels and stones called dumb cry out. Above him, yet not greatest, The god of waters vanished underground Calls to me, bids me tell of him. Strange streams Flow flagging in the undescribed deep fourms Of creatures born the first of all, long dead: Wherefore he guides their channels and stifled songs. And fills them with delight of headlong falls To keep the echoes roaring all through time. And blind fish grow Among those waters, for small light comes there; He makes the white weeds live that are their food, And heals them from all taints and maladies. No man has seen this god: who plies along The long lakes never dreamed nor plummeted, The tiny runlet trickling steep through rocks, The river gliding darkly tunnelled in, And of his realms is proud as any king. Of six gods have you heard, their emperies And deathless works: and over us all is set One greater. He with kingcraft marvellous Brings out of death the loveliest looks of life, And from corruption with his alchemy Images beauty: where the dead leaves piled, Lo, wind-flowers and the etched uncrumpled fern, And where the corpse was hidden, wallflowers, And in the mossed dank oak-stub, primroses. And those who wander in November's woods Find toadstools twired and hued fantastically Yellow, and yellow-mottled red, and black, In all antique and unimagined vogues. For these are his ephemeral delights, Made for the whims of beauty, and then gone. He stells the meadows in similitude Of stars in black sky-spaces, in his hands He catches filtering flames of morn and eve, To be the sunshine of the buttercup, The sunlight of the darnel. Where graves are, He haunts to make unloveliness be blossoms; Where hosts have hewn down hosts in war, he is Ever enharvesting their sepulchres With promises of things divine, wild flowers Innumerable, hues unsurpassable -- These seven gods whose sort I have declared, Traveller, are templed in a secret shrine. For when we move in shadows through your world, We see the shrines of gods: we hear their hymns Filling their marble immemorial domes In sworn allegiance to a mystery. All gods that have been love this mystery, Nor we the least. O linger here and listen To sorceries and rituals dear to us. Good traveller, through your weather-beaten look A radiance ever lightens out to me, Born of a loyal love: but now the pipe Of pewits newly fledged, from sunken ground, Brimmed with the moving mists that usher cold, Shrills clear, and warns me to the waterpit. Across the sandy path the tiny frogs Go yerking, and already it grows dark. * * * * With that the Traveller's eyes were sealed afresh, So that he saw the god no more: but then He thought he heard a music spangled over With strange delightful echoes, frail as pearls, And words came burgeoning in his heart, like these: With seven lamps for seven saints -- Cry we up the thundering chasm -- Lighting seven effigies, Marble writhed to martyr-spasm -- With seven coffins small and queer -- Run, echo, up the tarn's rupt wall -- Wherein are prostrate effigies Of seven sinners, silver-small -- With seven niches odorous -- Fly, murmur, up the flinty shelves -- Wherein are seven gods enshrined; This temple hold we for ourselves. The long lake in the caverned moor Is sluiced and sucked into the pit, And rumbles ever with a roar Into the shrine prepared for it -- The falling water is the priest, The thunderous water is the quire; And we seven gods are well appeased With fetch-light lamps that twinkle and twire. And winter after winter dies But we die never till the earth Grows dizzy, watched by countless eyes, And then's the end of all her mirth. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ROMANTIC MOMENTS by TONY HOAGLAND INSECT LIFE OF FLORIDA by LYNDA HULL THE ANIMALS by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE PRESENCES by JOSEPHINE JACOBSEN THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES BESTIARY by EARL (EARLE) BIRNEY THE FARMER'S BOY: WINTER by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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