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  Forefathers

HERE they went with smock and crook,

Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade,

Here they mudded out the brook

And here their hatchet cleared the glade

Harvest-supper woke their wit,

Huntsman's moon their wooings lit.

From this church they led their brides,

From this church themselves were led

Shoulder-high ; on these waysides

Sat to take their beer and bread.

Names are gone--what men they were

These their cottages declare.

Names are vanished, save the few

In the old brown Bible scrawled;

These were men of pith and thew,

Whom the city never called;

Scarce could read or hold a quill,

Built the barn, the forge, the mill.

On the green they watched their sons

Playing till too dark to see,

As their fathers watched them once,

As my father once watched me;

While the bat and beetle flew

On the warm air webbed with dew.

Unrecorded, unrenowned,

Men from whom my ways begin,

Here I know you by your ground

But I know you not within--

All is mist, and there survives

Not a moment of your lives.

Like the bee that now is blown

Honey-heavy on my hand,

From the toppling tansy-throne

In the green tempestuous land,--

I'm in clover now, nor know

Who made honey long ago.

Edmund Blunden

  Gleaning

ALONG the baulk the grasses drenched in dews

Soak through the morning gleaner's clumsy shoes,

And cloying cobwebs trammel their brown cheeks

While from the shouldering sun the dewfog reeks.

Now soon begun, on ground where yesterday

The rakers' warning-sheaf forbade their way,

Hard clucking dames in great white hoods make haste

To cram their lapbags with the barley waste,

Scrambling as if a thousand were but one,

Careless of stabbing thistles. Now the sun

Gulps up the dew and dries the stubs, and scores

Of tiny people trundle out of doors

Among the stiff stalks, where the scratched hands ply

Red ants and blackamoors and such as fly;

Tunbellied, too, with legs a finger long,

The spider harvestman ; the churlish strong

Black scorpion, prickled earwig, and that mite

Who shuts up like a leaden shot in fright

And lies for dead. And still before the rout

The young rats and the fieldmice whisk about

And from the trod whisp out the leveret darts,

Bawled at by boys that pass with blundering carts

Top-heavy to the red-tiled barns.--And still

The children feed their corn sacks with good will,

And farmwives ever faster stoop and flounce.

The hawk drops down a plummet's speed to pounce

The nibbling mouse or resting lark away,

The lost mole tries to pierce the mattocked clay

In agony and terror of the sun.

The dinner hour and its grudged leisure won,

All sit below the pollards on the dykes

Rasped with the twinge of creeping barley spikes.

Sweet beyond telling now the small beer goes

From the hooped hardwood bottles, the wasp knows,

And even hornets whizz from the eaten ash ;

Then crusts are dropt and switches snatched to slash,

While safe in shadow of the apron thrown

Aside the bush which years before was grown

To snap the poacher's nets, the baby sleeps.

Now toil returns, in red-hot fluttering light

And far afield the weary rabble creeps,

Oft happening blind wheat, black among the white,

That smutches where it touches quick as soot;--

Oft gaping where the landrail seems afoot,

Who with such magic throws his baffling speech

Far off he sounds when scarce beyond arm's reach.

The dogs are left to mind the morning's gam,

But squinting knaves can slouch to steal the grain.

Close to the farm the fields are gleaned agen,

Where the boy droves the turkey and white hen

To pick the shelled sweet corn, their hue and cry

Answers the gleaners' gabble; and sows trudge by

With little pigs to play and rootle there,

And all the fields are full of din and blare.

So steals the time past, so they glean and gloat;

The hobby-horse whirs round, the moth's dust coat

Blends with the stubble, scarlet soldiers fly

In airy pleasure; but the gleaners' eye

Sees little but their spoils, or robin-flower

Ever on tenterhooks to shun the shower,

Their weather-prophet never known astray;

When he folds up, then towards the hedge glean they.

But now the dragon of the skies droops, pales,

And wandering in the wet grey western vales

Stumbles, and passes, and the gleaning's done.

The farmer with fat hares slung on his gun

Gives folks goodnight, as down the ruts they pull

The creaking two-wheeled handcarts bursting full,

And whimpering children cease their teazing squawls

While left alone the supping partridge calls--

Till all at home is stacked from mischief's way,

To thrash and dress the first wild windy day;

And each good wife crowns weariness with pride,

With such small riches more than satisfied.

Edmund Blunden

  Journey

ALONG the relic of an ancient ride

Where all the summer's weeds, an upstart race,

The thoroughfare of centuries denied,

We took our way, nor wished a better place.

There gilded flies and bees buzzed sweet content;

The path became a glade, a thousand ways

About the hills and holes the brambles went,

With first dewberries blue as thunder haze.

Red rosy flowers a thicket swarmed beyond

Where long ago the faint brook's dropples died,

And, not to drown us in their blossomed pond,

Into the pasture's gap we turned aside.

Stern on their knolls the patriarch thistles stood,

Nid-nodding in assembly passing wise,

While often urchin winds in antic rude

Plucked their white beards, puffed them to sink or rise

Like tufts stolen from the clouds whose concourse slow

Darkened awhile or lightened travelling on,

The darkest turning whiter than new snow

As through the clifts the sun a moment shone.

A nameless track, a rabble of outcast weeds,

And knots of thistle-wool in clownish chase,

What fare were these to furnish pleasure's needs?

We laughed at time, nor wished a better place.

Edmund Blunden

  Reunion in War

THE windmill in his smock of white

Stared from his little crest,

Like a slow smoke was the moonlight

As I went like one possessed

Where the glebe path makes shortest way;

The stammering wicket swung.

I passed amid the crosses grey

Where opiate yew-boughs hung.

The bleached grass shuddered into sighs,

The dogs that knew this moon

Far up were harrying sheep, the cries

Of hunting owls went on.

And I among the dead made haste

And over flat vault stones

Set in the path unheeding paced

Nor thought of those chill bones.

Thus to my sweetheart's cottage I,

Who long had been away,

Turned as the traveller turns adry

To brooks to moist his clay.

Her cottage stood like a dream, so clear

And yet so dark; and now

I thought to find my more than dear

And if she'd kept her vow.

Old house dog from his barrel came

Without a voice, and knew

And licked my hand; all seemed the same

To the moonlight and the dew.

By the white damson then I took

The tallest osier wand

And thrice upon her casement strook,

And she, so fair, so fond,

Looked out, and saw in wild delight

And tiptoed down to me,

And cried in silent joy that night

Beside the bullace tree.

O cruel time to take away,

And worse to bring agen;

Why slept not I in Flanders clay

With all the murdered men?

For I had changed, or she had changed,

Though true loves both had been,

Even while we kissed we stood estranged

With the ghosts of war between.

We had not met but a moment ere

War baffled Joy, and cried,

" Love's but a madness, a burnt flare;

The shell's a madman's bride."

The cottage stood, poor stone and wood,

Poorer than stone stood I;

Then from her kind arms moved in a mood

As grey as the cereclothed sky.

The roosts were stirred, each little bird

Called fearfully out for day;

The church clock with his dead voice whirred

As if he bade me stay.

To trace with madman's fingers all

The letters on the stones

Where thick beneath the twitch roots crawl

In dead men's envied bones.

Edmund Blunden

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