Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO NATURE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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TO NATURE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: O my stern mother, aye, in that name loved
Last Line: Receives, and bids be calm as it is calm.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Nature


O MY stern mother, aye, in that name loved,
Who gave me life and all its greenest fields,
And yet to counterchange the simple joy
Gave me this braih, whose luck it seems to be
Ever to labour like a winnowing drudge,
But blind, unknowing if it beat in vain,
Unknowing what is truth, for the secret truth
Straining in pallor all my waking hours,
And even in dreams with worse shadow encircled,
How this late noonday lights your sibyl's brow!

For now so calm and tender rest the pastures,
And now so sweet the distant sun looks down,
And russet lands lie gleaming, so serene
They colour to the plough -- your thought's known there.
The patient ploughing horses, mates so kind,
In whose white foreheads surely wisdom lives
Unquestioned, in this hour bring me to tears
And I must shield my eyes and turn away.

Mysterious mother, I in your strange glances
Have long been wandering lonely; now I see
The earth new dug, how clean and quiet lying!
And since I find my life driven on, on, on
Like poor hare running till her heart is broken,
Nor do you check the fiends, if fiends they are,
Now show them as my foolish dreams, if dreams,
I long to hide me deep in your brown earth,
That will not ask whose is the flesh it turns
To its own likeness, but with vast good will
Receives, and bids be calm as it is calm.





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