Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE PIKE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: From shadows of rich oaks outpeer Last Line: And the miller that opens the hatch stands amazed at the whirl in the water. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): England; Landscape; Pike (fish); English | ||||||||
FROM shadows of rich oaks outpeer The moss-green bastions of the weir, Where the quick dipper forages In elver-peopled crevices. And a small runlet trickling down the sluice Gossamer music tires not to unloose. Else round the broad pool's hush Nothing stirs. Unless sometime a straggling heifer crush Through the thronged spinny whence the pheasant whirs; Or martins in a flash Come with wild mirth to dip their magical wings, While in the shallow some doomed bulrush swings At whose hid root the diver vole's teeth gnash. And nigh this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch, Watching the waterpit shelving and dark Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread. The rose-finned roach and bluish bream And staring ruffe steal up the stream Hard by their glutted tyrant, now Still as a sunken bough. He on the sandbank lies, Sunning himself long hours With stony gorgon eyes: Westward the hot sun lowers. Sudden the gray pike changes, and quivering poises for slaughter; Intense terror wakens around him, the shoals scud awry, but there chances A chub unsuspecting; the prowling fins quicken, in fury he lances; And the miller that opens the hatch stands amazed at the whirl in the water. | 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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