Wilfrid Scawen Blunt Poems

Tears, idle tears! Ah, who shall bid us weep,
Now that thy lyre, O prophet, is unstrung?
What voice shall rouse the dull world from its sleep
...

At this fair oak table sat
Whilom he our Laureate,
Poet, handicraftsman, sage,
...

Oh, for a perfect sonnet of all time!
Wild music, heralding immortal hopes,
Strikes the bold prelude. To it from each clime,
...

I touched that knee. She did not show surprise,
And the earth had not opened at our feet.
She did not even laugh. Her foolish eyes
...

Thus through these griefs I had been set apart,
As for a double priesthood. Life to me,
In those first moments when I probed my heart,
...

My childhood, then, had passed a mystery
Shrouded by death, my boyhood a shut thing.
The passion of my soul as it grew free
...

Beyond her sat a second monster. She
In shape and sense was undisguisedly real,
An ox--eyed queen of full--fed majesty
...

Naked I came into the world of pleasure,
And naked come I to this house of pain.
Here at the gate I lay down my life's treasure,
...

Yet so it was. Adrian had hardly set
His lips to those cold lips where death had been,
His eyes those clammy eyelids scarce had wet
...

The thought of night consoled him. To his vision
Natalia was dead only in false death,
The sleeping treason of some false misprision,
...