Near and Far (Blunden)/Familiarity

by Edmund Blunden

MOODS, CONJECTURES, AND FANCIES

Familiarity

Dance not your spectral dance at me;  I know you well!Along this lane there lives no tree  But I can tell.I know each fall and rise and twist;You—why, a wildflower in the mist,  The moon, the mist.

Sound not that long alarm, gray tower,  I know you well;This is your habit at this hour,  You and your bell!If once, I heard a hundred timesThrough evening's ambuscade your chimes—  Dark tower, your chimes.

Enforce not that no-meaning so,  Familiar stream;Whether you tune it high or low,  I know your theme;A proud-fed but a puny rill,A meadow brook, poured quick and shrill—  Alone and shrill.

Sprawl not so monster-like, blind mist;  I know not "seems";I am too old a realist   To take sea-dreamsFrom you, or think a great white WhaleFloats through our hawthorn-scented vale—  This foam-cold vale.