Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

THE RELIGION OF LOVE

May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

What care I for the rest, for good or ill?
What for the peace of soul good deeds impart,
What for the tears unholy dreams distil?
These cannot make my joy, nor shall they kill.
Thou only perfect peace and virtue art
And holiness for me and strength and will,
So thou but love me with a perfect heart.
I ask thee now no longer to be wise;
No longer to be good, but loving me.
I ask thee nothing now but only this.
Henceforth my Bible, dear, shall be thine eyes,
My beads thy lips, my prayers thy constancy,
My heaven thine arms, eternity thy kiss.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

Come, Prudence, you have done enough to–day–

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

We both have earned, even more than rest, from toil;Our minds need laughter, as a spent lamp oil,And after their long fast a recompense.How sweet the evening is with its fresh scentsOf briar and fern distilled by the warm wind!How green a robe the rain has left behind!How the birds laugh!–What say you to a…

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

My childhood, then, had passed a mystery

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

The passion of my soul as it grew freeWith growing youth, a bird with broken wing,Knew nothing of its strength to dare or do,Or, if it dreamed of battle still to come,That was its secret hidden in the blueOf life’s great vault of tears which was its doom,A duty of revenge some day for blood.Enough!…

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

I fled the booth with feelings as of Cain,

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

My cheeks had blushed till it was physical pain,And my eyes smarted. Through my head there wentThe little woman’s last appealing wordBidding me stop, in tones that smote afresh.And ‘twixt my finger and thumb there throbbed and stirredThe semblance of that monstrous pound of flesh,The knee that I had handled. With it tooThe jet beads…

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

TO ONE WITH HIS SONNETS

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

What my life was in it is written plain.These are no dreams, but things of flesh and blood,The past that lived and shall not live again.This is the book. I dare not bid you read.Too much of my poor soul you would unlock.Your own soul, if it tender were, might bleed.I could not bear that…

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

I cannot tell his story. He was one

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

Was strangely put, and who, because of thatAnd that he could not read it, died. But a short hourBefore he passed, the woman who stood by,Weeping as once she had wept to see him born,Tired with her watching looked into his faceAnd saw the heavy eyelids dropping downLoaded with sleep. And she, for all her…

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

But where he fared and how, it matters not.

Byammarkhan May 10, 2020May 10, 2020

Were out of mind with all and clean forgot,Kinsman and friend and foe: save only one,Only Natalia. She with tightened breathHeard his name spoken in reproof’s vain wayAnd gave her melancholy soul to death.Foolish Natalia, who in love’s full dayHad spent her grief, had nothing now to giveOf greater woe to her soul’s agonies.Living she…

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