Edmund Blunden Quotes

I am for the woods against the world, But are the woods for me?

Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.

I have been young, and now am not too old; And I have seen the righteous forsaken, His health, his honour and his quality taken. This is not what we were formerly told.

This was my country and it may be yet, But something flew between me and the sun.

Cuinchy…was a slaughter yard… Who that had been there for but a few hours could ever forget the sullen sorcery and mad lineaments of Cuinchy?

Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan, Use him as though you love him; Court him, elude him, reel and pass, And let him hate you through the glass.

Then is not death at watch Within those secret waters ? What wants he but to catch Earth’s heedless sons and daughters ?

Unrecorded, unrenowned, Men from whom my ways begin, Here I know you by your ground But I know you not within—There is silence, there survives Not a moment of your lives.

And night this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch, Watching the water-pit shelving and dark Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals tread.

All things they have in common, being so poor, And their one fear, Death’s shadow at the door. Each sundown makes them mournful, each sunrise Brings back the brightness in their failing eyes.