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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
FOREFATHERS, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Here they went with smock and crook Last Line: Who made honey long ago. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): Ancestors & Ancestry; England; Landscape; Heritage; Heredity; English | |||
HERE they went with smock and crook, Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade, Here they mudded out the brook And here their hatchet cleared the glade: Harvest-supper woke their wit, Huntsman's moon their wooings lit. From this church they led their brides, From this church themselves were led Shoulder-high; on these waysides Sat to take their beer and bread. Names are gone -- what men they were These their cottages declare. Names are vanished, save the few In the old brown Bible scrawled; These were men of pith and thew, Whom the city never called; Scarce could read or hold a quill, Built the barn, the forge, the mill. On the green they watched their sons Playing till too dark to see, As their fathers watched them once, As my father once watched me; While the bat and beetle flew On the warm air webbed with dew. Unrecorded, unrenowned, Men from whom my ways begin, Here I know you by your ground But I know you not within -- There is silence, there survives Not a moment of your lives. Like the bee that now is blown Honey-heavy on my hand, From his toppling tansy-throne In the green tempestuous land -- I'm in clover now, nor know Who made honey long ago. | 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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