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


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PAGODA, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: From the knoll of beeches peeping
Last Line: Seems once more to be my own.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund


FROM the knoll of beeches peeping
On the patterned water sleeping
Stands the Chinese temple yet,
Heaped with dead leaves, all alone.

Faded are its amber panels,
Where the channering insect channels,
And the blood-red dragons fret
That glared so grimly thereupon.

Mother-pearl and pink shells once
In formal geometricons
Gemmed the arrassed inner wall,
But tapestries and frieze are gone.

The small robin reconnoitres,
Unabashed the woodmouse loiters:
Brown owls hoot at shadow-fall
And deathwatch ticks and beetles drone.

But I see the shamed pavilion
Bright with yellow and vermilion,
And, in the sun's hallucination,
Squired by mandarin Corydon,

Satin-sandalled Chloes glimmering,
Gryphon-urns of Bohea shimmering,
And the long lost generation
Seems once more to be my own.





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