Edmund Charles Blunden

“Australia once produced poets who were English poets a little out of touch; now she has her own; and O'Reilly with ball in hand is quite the parallel of an Australian poet, territorially distinct in rhythm, passion, scheme and transition.”

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

“To-day's house makes to-morrow’s road;  I knew these heaps of stoneWhen they were walls of grace and might,The country’s honour, art’s delightThat over fountain'd silence show'd  Fame's final bastion.”

“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.”

“I saw the sunlit vale, and the pastoral fairy-tale;The sweet and bitter scent of the may drifted by;And never have I seen such a bright bewildering green.  But it looked like a lie,  Like a kindly meant lie.”

“The field and wood, all bone-fed loam,Set up a roaring harvest-home.”

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

“Cricket to us, like you, was more than play,It was a worship in the summer sun.”

“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? With but a crystal parapet Between, he has his engines set.”

“The hop-poles stand in cones,   The icy pond lurks under,The pole-tops steeple to the thrones   Of stars, sound gulfs of wonder;But not the tallest there, ’tis said,Could fathom to this pond’s black bed.”

“Can she who shines so calm be fear? What poison pours she in slumber's ear?”

“Old farm-houses with their white faces Fly, and their ghosts have taken their places;    Even the signposts like grim liars    Point to losing brakes and briars.”

“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 knowWho made honey long ago.”

“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,Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit.”

“And nigh this toppling reed, still as the deadThe great pike lies, the murderous patriarch,Watching the waterpit shelving and darkWhere through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread.... {{pb}} He on the sandbank lies, Sunning himself long hours With stony gorgon eyes: Westward the hot sun lowers.”

“At Quincy's moat the squandering village ends,And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friendsOf all the village, two old dames that clingAs close as any trueloves in the spring.”