Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE ENGLISH POETS, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE ENGLISH POETS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: I looked across the fields and saw a light
Last Line: The spirit fire that keeps our england young?
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Poetry & Poets; English


I LOOKED across the fields and saw a light
Abroad through all the morning earth and air,
A hue of heaven! -- I thought it common sight;
Was radiant thence and dreamed all people were.

A hue of heaven! or passion of old earth,
Triumphant in the pastoral long played there,
Memory of wakes and wooings and May mirth
When Lear was young; so shone my earth and air.

Yet to no words I set my revery;
Loved well the landscape, but as though its prime
For all eyes bloomed from cloud and shepherd's tree,
For me would bloom, as trees would, all my time --

Till years had changed my gazing. Then as one
Wakes from a dream and sighing would renew
The happy dream, but then! it is clean gone,
I knew my loss, I sighed for the darling hue.

How many doting eyes of poets dead
Have known and lost the Spirit of this sweet land
Who to young wonder glows! and as I read,
Longing in past enchanted vales to stand,

From pages hid away by time, or crowned
With timeless laurels, oft on a sudden arose
The mist of magic, and old haunted ground
Shone with the Spirit who to young wonder glows.

Soon come, soon gone! and yet the brief disclose
Sweetened my days, and in desire I grew
The constant suppliant and the friend of those
From whose love's annals, known to all or few,

By virtue of that true and earnest love,
The wandering light might kindle here and there;
In halt harsh phrase or Muses' treasure-trove,
In warmest ecstasy or recountings bare.

And shall I ever pass the humblest name
Of honest English song for England sung,
When from the uncouth shrine to me might flame
The spirit fire that keeps our England young?





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