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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE PASSER-BY, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography
First Line: The listless year goes dimly down
Last Line: "once ended ""never, never part""!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Landscape; English
First Line: The listless year goes dimly down
Last Line: "once ended ""never, never part""!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): England; Landscape; English
THE listless year goes dimly down,
The sun flares low on meadows brown,
And at the low end of the town
The ploughman sits with heavy dreams.
Crouched on the fallen oak alone
With fingers slack he spins a stone,
Thinking of youth and mirth once known,
With friends as nimble as morning-beams,
Who sped with him to this playground,
Now threadbare, dumb and sportless found,
To laugh and leap the free year round,
With bats or rods, in floods or flowers.
The sudden air is loud with those!
He lifts his face: by heaven, there goes
A figure whom he surely knows,
His mate. He stares with all his powers:
The figure passes without pause.
He thinks, that was old Ro, that was --
Call him? recall him? ... He withdraws,
Flings down his stone, jeers at his heart:
As though that stranger passing now
Would wish to know a lad from plough
With whom some cobwebbed boyish vow
Once ended "never, never part"!
Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!
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NINETEEN FORTY by NORMAN DUBIE
GHOSTS IN ENGLAND by ROBINSON JEFFERS
STAYING UP FOR ENGLAND by LIAM RECTOR
STONE AND FLOWER by KENNETH REXROTH
THE HANGED MAN by KENNETH REXROTH
ENGLISH TRAIN COMPARTMENT by JOHN UPDIKE
ALMSWOMEN by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN