Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A FAVOURITE SCENE; RECALLED ON LOOKING AT BIRKET FOSTER'S LANDSCAPE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A FAVOURITE SCENE; RECALLED ON LOOKING AT BIRKET FOSTER'S LANDSCAPE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hauntest thou so my waking and my sleeping
Last Line: Where boding beauty sighs alas!
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Landscape; Paintings & Painters


HAUNTEST thou so my waking and my sleeping,
Darling of solitude, Arcadian grace,
Round these long stony ruins of absence peeping,
My Naiad; even more, my nymphal race
Budded at once, all, all congendering,
And at one glad look new-rendering
Whatever joy in tree is dreaming, in meadow sauntering, in freshet leaping?

As in the dance, when this one makes advance,
The other too with answering gesture moves,
I as I hear thee singing would singing near thee
And mate and imitate those spells that endear thee --
Which old Time bowering in thy dell approves,
And spares to do thee wrong,
Himself slow murmuring round, as though newfound,
Thy fountain-song.
Thy spirit self, perfume and dew and breeze
Of unknown birth but lovely, hovers now
Before my sense, that copies as it sees,
And like thee strives to glide and float and bow;
To such a daedal dancer
Would make a faultless answer --
But where's the fresh enchantment? the serene
Undulant omnipresence of the queen?
Dear stranger, rarer than Sabrina, stay,
And kindly lead the shepherd's holiday;
And from thy simple adornings make May-mornings,
For one who stumbles through a thorny way.
Thou ne'er yet hast deserted him,
Who, though his eyes with weeping swim,
Would marvel on thy waters' brim,
And still has misty-bright esteems
Of all thy trances shy and sacred, thy pure streams.

Lament it not as though October gloom
With thunder's glare malign and brutal boom
Struck thy bombarded beauty, when his swarthy
And clownish measures all unworthy
Strive in thy own delight to dance before thee!
There, he cries, the willow dips
Her rainy hair in the falling fount,
And there the silvery songbird sips
And steps on stones whose gems I'll count;
The frolic wind that ranged too long
The hot hay-field, he sips to-day,
And runs again renewed and strong
To kiss the lasses in the hay;
The ripple silvers rings on rings
Where one small water-darling springs,
And He that knew how lilies grew
And without beauty's frown outshone
The panoplies of Solomon,
O had He seen this retinue
Of rosy-petalled sauntering joys
That in the water swirl or poise --
Most him who with his blue-zoned mail
Follows the idle kings that sail
In worlds scarce deeper than the glass
Where boding beauty sighs Alas!





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