Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FIRST SNOW, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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FIRST SNOW, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: By the red chimney-pots the pigeons cower
Last Line: Even his enemies sing!
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Landscape; Snow; English


BY the red chimney-pots the pigeons cower,
With heads tucked in, to find what warmth they may;
Swift the white motes are come in a glistening shower,
And the blue brightness that unsealed the day
Is lost in wreathing grey.

Half hoping, and half doubting, small birds come
And whistle on the taloned boughs; where still
Pale apples swing, like masks that in old Rome
The gardeners hung to warn each pilfering bill.
But here worse gods shall kill.

The shower convolves and drives: all the trees' arms
Are whitened over till small birds well know
What fate has bidden. Faint from lonely farms
Guns speak like echoes of the croaking crow.
How silent comes the snow!

Now what shall warm the frost-burnt grape that clings
To the green sapless vine? Poor budding rose
And lavender's late blossom, get you wings
To flee the death that in the winnow goes.
Mute the cloaked village grows;

Not a bird pipes; nor cockerel calls the tune,
But underneath the ivied paling passes
With all his hens. The church clock drones the noon;
In the brown gaping grave the snow amasses,
The thin wind shakes the grasses.

To-day they bear the priest unto his rest
Among his own, where he so long had willed.
There he shall lie, time's winter in his breast,
There the harsh tongue of malice shall be stilled,
There toil's reward fulfilled.

If only through the snow and stomped mould he
Might hear the bells or horses' brasses ring,
The lads at football still, the children's glee
At slide; the rooks, the baaing lambs in spring,
Even his enemies sing!





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