These silvery dews can never again be dear

Remembrance Sunday - and here is Edmund Blunden's most powerful poem (written in 1916) and taken from the pictured collection:


Thiepval Wood

The tired air groans as the heavies swing over, the river-hollows boom;
The shell-fountains leap from the swamps, and with wildfire and fume
The shoulder of the chalkdown convulses.
Then the jabbering echoes stampede in the slatting wood,
Ember-black the gibbet trees like bones or thorns protrude
From the poisonous smoke past all impulses.
To them these silvery dews can never again be dear,
Nor the blue javelin-flame of the thunderous noons strike fear.

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Edmund Blunden (1896 – 1974)

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