Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A TRANSCRIPTION, by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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First Line: This young man comes from your way, tom
Last Line: "there's nothen now for nobody, only sorrow."
Alternate Author Name(s): Blunden, Edmund
Subject(s): Grief; Home; Nostalgia; Sports; Sorrow; Sadness


"THIS young man comes from your way, Tom."
At this
The old thin silent fellow on the sack,
Who turned some pages with a face of lead,
Clapt eyes on me. His quivering jaw released
Words sere and rambling as November leaves.
"You come from my way .... Ah, I used to know
Sturmere, New England, Stoke, the Valley Arms.
'Tis forty years ago. 'Tis changed, no doubt.
Yes, I knew all them places."
Here the master
Of the old-clothes shop pointed me again,
"He went a-cricketin' out to Stoke Whit-Monday.
"Cricketin'? Ah, there warn't no cricket then,
Except the boys might take a bat at nights.
The men ne'er played no cricket nor no quoits
Nor football. Tenpins -- that was all there was."
And pausing, he gave ear to something afar
And suddenly heard what made his words ring out.
"But we had music in the churches then,
The clar'net on a Sunday used to play
In Sturmere church -- and as the sayen is,
The clar'net used to sound like HEAVEN ON EARTH."
O Love, your anthem reached the dealer's den,
The rags and rubbish thence all-glorious shone.
And he again: "There's no such music now,
There's nothen now for nobody, only sorrow."





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