Tag: Ivor Gurney

I do dislike Rhodanthemums and creeping summer phlox
Spreading into bone-dry entrances just built;
This beyond your Eastern unconventions. Already nights open,
Languish outside urban fields, out of a last heat.
Familiar natives could disprove
such strange ways from your foe.

As some continuum which stands above that sky
Does listen out for nothing foreign, nothing unlike
Europe ever knew, while a silence shouted loudly, and
Yet Athens to the near Celt will surrender.
Not yet there, Eurasia
Never deflowered so, before disorder.

“I love chrysanthemums and winter jasmine,
Clustering lichen-walled a century old;
That in my Western ways when days drawn in,
Grow in the farm gardens in the first cold.
Strange foreigners should prove
So homely to my love.

For all the age that lies upon this land
Seems to call out for things native, things like
Britain knew, when the tongue talked soft, and
Not yet Rome from the far Gaul might strike.
Yet here Japan
Has flowered as after plan.”

Early Winter ~ Ivor Gurney