Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE AVENUE, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Up the long colonnade I press, and strive Last Line: To seek and serve the beauty that must die. Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund Subject(s): World War I; First World War | ||||||||
UP the long colonnade I press, and strive By love to thank God that I go alive: And the night dark as palls of cloud can prove Bids me seek beauty, while wetshod I move, In the scarce-glimmering boles and flying boughs That run up black and naked to Heaven's brows And are as still as life could ever be. Thus think I trudging on to know each tree, This leaning out of line; that with great rings, Ay, ruffs of gnarled grain, whence the forked top springs; That with its crow's nest; one whose boughs stoop down Like roots into the sward below; one's crown Struck by the lightning, whence it stands alone Stark staring mad but dead, its own tombstone. And still trees, trees; long lies the journey through, Till the thought runs like rebel dogs askew, And soon one tree is like the rest a tree: If stunt or sturdy, all are one to me. While men ahead, behind and left and right, Tramp over the greasy cobbles through midnight, Between great monolith trees, and often throw Their strapped packs up to ease them, as they go Half in a sleep, brain-cramped, dead though they live; And those who speak find but few words to give. Drenchingly dripped the trees, the blown sleet came, These trees were jagged with worse than lightning's flame, These fields were gouged with worse than ploughs, a moan Worse than the wind's with every wind went on. The rattling limbers hurrying past would jar The jangled nerves, and candles' chancing gleam From sweating cellars looked sweet peace as far As any star and wilder than a dream To him who soon would be beyond the wire Listening his wits to ague in the mire, And waiting till the drumfire hours began, In the fool's triumph of the soul of man: Beneath those lights whose fountain-play would shine On quiet hamlets miles behind the line, That in our respite we had watched ascend, And poise their drooped heads scouring end to end The grey front lines; and plucking at death's sleeve They showed him in the nick new skulls to cleave, Yet never once lit up our destiny, But moped and mowed in dizzy secrecy. Now on the sky I see the dull lights burn Of that small village whither I return. The trees hide backward in the mists, the men Are lying in their thankless graves agen, And I a stranger in my home pass by To seek and serve the beauty that must die. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...D'ANNUNZIO by ERNEST HEMINGWAY 1915: THE TRENCHES by CONRAD AIKEN TO OUR PRESIDENT by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE HORSES by KATHARINE LEE BATES CHILDREN OF THE WAR by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE U-BOAT CREWS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE RED CROSS NURSE by KATHARINE LEE BATES WAR PROFITS by KATHARINE LEE BATES THE UNCHANGEABLE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
|