Poems
To introduce Blunden’s poetry we have divided his output into four periods to show how his style and use of language changed over the years, and how his pilgrimage as a poet developed throughout his life.
We will be changing the selection of poems now and then. You can request a poem for the page using the form.
Take a look at the latest poem request below:
Requested Poem
This poem was requested by Rose Anderson. She grew up in the village of Long Melford and is very familiar with Edmund Blunden’s gravestone in churchyard there.
The first two lines from the poem are on his gravestone.
One of Blunden’s later selections of his poems, it was published by Collins while he was still Professor of English at Hong Kong University. The selection is dedicated to his students and his colleagues in the English Department.
Seers
I live still, to love still
Things quiet and unconcerned –
And many can say this.
I watch their bliss,
To these things they have ever returned.
One who has passed beyond
Sits in my room with me,
But is sitting beside a pond
On a fallen tree,
And the pictured water-countenance
Is his day’s ample inheritance.
And one died young who passed
An hour or two away
From war, where windows were glassed
And kept their kind display,
There he stands rapt, – the china, the clocks,
Gollywogs, chessmen, postcards, frocks.
Enough it was also for her
Whose life was toil on toil
If sometimes a wanderer
Where bracken fronds uncoil,
Or silverweeds in woodways shone
She might regard them one by one.
1962
The Early Poems
World War 1 and World War 2
Post War
Late Poems
