Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HAWTHORN, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HAWTHORN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Beneath that hawthorn shade the grass will hardly grow
Last Line: Sit in this same sanctuary.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Hawthorn; Landscape; English


BENEATH that hawthorn shade the grass will hardly grow,
So many babes have played and kept the bare clay so,
So many loves delayed in the moonlight's ebb and flow --
Daisy-chains and May beginnings,
Fail not till I pass below.

The roots of this same thorn are polished like a stool,
Each grey and goblin horn grown craftwise beautiful,
And sometimes to adorn is left a tuft of wool --
I envy still the merry runnings
Of those that pass that way from school.

The moonlight through the may and the whisper fluttering there,
Like angels on their way to the lamp of pain and prayer,
Gleams and ripplings play, and we lay our forehead bare,
For here the coolest, cleverest cunnings
Know the unknown's winged air.

Come, little tiny child, here's white violets for thee,
Come, smiling beauty wild, love's the dryad of this tree,
And thou baptized mild, this thorny chapel see,
And may I for all my sinnings
Sit in this same sanctuary.





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