THE COVERT by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN

I ALWAYS thought to find my love
In some grove's ancient lair
Where though all day my steps might rove
No one beside would fare:

Among the small forgotten woods
With clambering ivy laden,
By ridings lost in bramble hoods
I haunted for my maiden.

The greenest places I could find,
Where underwoods are free
To flourish like the taller kind,
Seemed homes where she might be.

And nothing but the loitering brook
Or bee with question rude
Notice of my intrusion took
Or felt my solitude.

The brook's eye mirrored me and seemed
With my own thoughts to shine,
The bee patrolling where I dreamed
Grumbled for countersign.

"And are not maidens fair to see
In every green and town?
Why go you wooing secretly
Through paths none travel down?

Why stare you on the sunny grove
Like pale ghosts on moonlight?
But madness there will find a love
And then be shut from sight."

Daphne from Phoebus fled of old
And grew into a tree,
And all the loves of heaven, I hold,
On earth now prisoned be.

And it may be, from earth or air,
My longing shall unsphere
Beauty that only Daphnes wear,
And so I tarry here --

Is there no spell upon this gloom
So radiant, cool and green,
As promises the sudden bloom
Of the loveliest ever seen?

I know not how or when the One
Shall come -- long have I gazed --
But shining like the vital sun
Till even the wood's amazed,

The flower of cool and flower of bright
And flower of woman too,
In the green dusk a dazzling light
Yet sweet as manna-dew:

Gliding into seen Form, where she
A locked-up secret lay,
From tingling air, from sighing tree --
This Love shall crown my day.

-- Thus murmured to himself the boy
Where all the spinneys ring
With as rich syllables of joy
As ever hailed the spring.

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

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