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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
A FADING PHANTOM, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: The bold sun like a merry lord Last Line: That now mere doubt flits by! Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund | |||
THE bold sun like a merry lord Looked in the barn and laughed there To see such roast beef on the board, Such ale and jest on draught there; The toasts were drunk, and still awhile The roof with uproar rung, But lured aside I crossed the stile And tyrannous tears upsprung. Far-slanting from the hilly baulk The acres drew my gaze Into the fields I used to walk And into other days: Hark to that voice -- but what was said? My brain strove as it thinned. I half deciphered from the dead What passed me like the wind. O voice of thousand throats and notes, How in this sudden swoon Shall mind distil the mist that floats So ghostly through the noon? I stared upon the far-off wood, The weir's eye flashed on mine, And chilly ran my summer blood To know Time's fluttering sign. There, Heaven, and there, sweet Heaven, you shone; I still surveyed the ground, I, like a spy; the grace was gone And nothing to be found. With memory laboured still my mind Fain to unravel life; As if, poor fool, so clumsy-kind! It knew joy's hieroglyph. "In luck and love together!" it cried; "The hay made incense, gold Swept Danae's lap in June's high tide As the shower in sunshine rolled; Through golden air the river took His rich ancestral ease, And poppies danced their flames and shook Their dark lives to the breeze. To his vast arms the shepherd oak Called Ariel's winged rout, Cool in crook'd lanes to plodding folk The cottages peeped out. With plunging elves the wells were wild, The brooks with naiads dinned, The vaporous willows sighed and smiled As passed the dallying wind." No more, my dull interpreter! When once the soul is flown The tenement's as void of her As common clay or stone; Surely she passed, that pale voice seemed Hers, surely she was night? But O my heart! how once she gleamed That now mere doubt flits by! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOREFATHERS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN REPORT ON EXPERIENCE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN SOLUTIONS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE GIANT PUFFBALL by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE MIDNIGHT SKATERS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN VLAMERTINGHE: PASSING THE CHATEAU, JULY 1917 by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN 11TH R.S.R. by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN 1916 SEEN FROM 1921 by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN A 'FIRST IMPRESSION': TOKYO by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN A BRIDGE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |
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