Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE DIFFICULT LAND, by EDWIN MUIR Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: This is a difficult land. Here things miscarry Subject(s): Farm Life; Endurance; Survival; Agriculture; Farmers | ||||||||
This is a difficult land. Here things miscarry Whether we care, or do not care enough. The grain may pine, the harlot weed grow haughty, Sun, rain, and frost alike conspire against us: You'd think there was malice in the very air. And the spring floods and summer droughts: our fields Mile after mile of soft and useless dust. On dull delusive days presaging rain We yoke the oxen, go out harrowing, Walk in the middle of an ochre cloud, Dust rising before us and falling again behind us, Slowly and gently settling where it lay. These days the earth itself looks sad and senseless. And when next day the sun mounts hot and lusty We shake our fist and kick the ground in anger. We have strange dreams: as that, in the early morning We stand and watch the silver drift of stars Turn suddenly to a flock of black-birds flying. And once in a lifetime men from over the border, In early summer, the season of fresh campaigns, Come trampling down the corn, and kill our cattle. These things we know and by good luck or guidance Either frustrate or, if we must, endure. We are a people; race and speech support us, Ancestral rite and custom, roof and tree, Our songs that tell of our triumphs and disasters (Fleeting alike), continuance of fold and hearth, Our names and callings, work and rest and sleep, And something that, defeated, still endures - These things sustain us. Yet there are times When name, identity, and our very hands, Senselessly labouring, grow most hateful to us, And we would gladly rid us of these burdens, Enter our darkness through the doors of wheat And the light veil of grass (leaving behind Name, body, country, speech, vocation, faith) And gather into the secrecy of the earth Furrowed by broken ploughs lost deep in time. We have such hours, but are drawn back again By faces of goodness, faithful masks of sorrow, Honesty, kindness, courage, fidelity, The love that lasts a life's time. And the fields, Homestead and stall and barn, springtime and autumn. (For we can love even the wandering seasons In their inhuman circuit.) And the dead Who lodge in us so strangely, unremembered, Yet in their place. For how can we reject The long last look on the ever-dying face Turned backward from the other side of time? And how offend the dead and shame the living By these despairs? And how refrain from love? This is a difficult country, and our home. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...KICKING THE LEAVES by DONALD HALL THE FARMER'S BOY: WINTER by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD THE FARMER'S BOY: SPRING by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD THE FARMER'S BOY: SUMMER by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD |
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