Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A.G.A.V., by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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First Line: Rest you well among your race, you who cannot be dead
Last Line: Vast tumult past, and the proud sense still of vast to-morrows to dare.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): World War I; First World War


REST you well among your race, you who cannot be dead;
Sleep lives in that country place, sleep now, pillow your head;
Time has been you could not sleep, would not if you could,
But the relief stands in the keep where you so nobly stood.

Ardour, valour, the ceaseless plan all agreed to be yours,
Wit with these familiar ran, when you went to the wars;
If one cause I have for pride, it is to have been your friend,
To have lain in shell-holes by your side, with you to have seen impend

The meteors of the hour of fire, to have talked where speech was love,
Where through fanged woods and maw-gray mire the rain and murder drove;
There unchanged and on your mark you laughed at some quaint clue,
And now, though time grows dull and dark, I hear, I bless you anew.

Sleep -- bless you, that would not please you, gallantest dear.
Should I find you beneath yew trees? better to look for you here.
With those others whom well we knew, who went so early away,
Will you not rather gladden my view? on a dead, deathless day

Riding into the ancient town, smiling scarcely aware,
Along the dale, over the down, into the drowsy square,
There to tarry in careless ways, in church, or shop, or inn,
Leisuring after fiery days; calm-shining, more than kin;

Though dim the guns of chaos roared upon the eastern gate,
Though every hour the clock-hand scored brought closer a desperate date --
Well shone you then, and I would will you freedom eternal there,
Vast tumult past, and the proud sense still of vast to-morrows to dare.





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