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



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First Line: Trenches in the moonlight, in the lulling moonlight
Last Line: For the moon's interpretation.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): World War I; First World War


TRENCHES in the moonlight, in the lulling moonlight
Have had their loveliness; when dancing dewy grasses
Caressed us passing along their earthy lanes;
When the crucifix hanging over was strangely illumined,
And one imagined music, one even heard the brave bird
In the sighing orchards flute above the weedy well.
There are such moments; forgive me that I note them,
Nor gloze that there comes soon the nemesis of beauty,
In the fluttering relics that at first glimmer wakened
Terror -- the no-man's ditch suddenly forking:
There, the enemy's best with bombs and brains and courage!
-- Softly, swiftly, at once be animal and angel --
But O no, no, they're Death's malkins dangling in the wire
For the moon's interpretation.





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