Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NOW OR NEVER, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NOW OR NEVER, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Bright fleet slow shadow! Puzzling guide
Last Line: I gaze, tremble and pass.
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund


BRIGHT fleet slow shadow! puzzling guide,
Smile not so fatal-strange, nor glide
Magnetically on and on;
Am I but your automaton?
O ghostly cruel pride!

From this fine orchard, branches sprawl
And bigarreaus and blackhearts fall;
Your violet eye has bid me clutch
Those cherries, and before I touch
They're dew, and soft you call.

The ivied covert is so sweet
That garlands you from gascon heat,
And yet your lip interprets not
That I dare love the hermit grot,
The faded counterfeit!

False cry; for well I saw the wood,
And on hurt brows put its cold hood,
And would have rested on the moss
To watch the moth and moonbeam cross
The path where you had stood.

But now you were, and I was, thence
In rosy dawn's magnificence,
While a young girl, that did not speak,
Stared long; the roses of her cheek
Beside the wild-rose fence!

She was, she is not; you are here,
Moves your strange smile to chill or cheer?
It subtly stirs, or seems, and yet
Read day by day 'tis firmly set,
Stirs, stirs not year on year.

The old house with its deep green glass
Looks, sheds tranquillity; airy grass
Sunlit by basking chimney sways,
The baby on the threshold plays.
I gaze, tremble and pass.





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