Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XIII
A heritage for ever. Such a sleep
Came upon Adrian and such a dream,
As in the shade he lay a weary heap.
For, while he rested, still it seemed to him
He rode towards the city of his love,
Only in mirth not sadness. And, behold,
In his soothed bosom Hope, a brooding dove,
Had made again her nest, and manifold
Fair pleasures round him seemed to perch and sing
Like wild birds in the branches overhead,
And his heart leaped in joy with everything,
As in the days ere yet his joys were dead,
Until he found himself, it seemed, in Rome
And knocking at the doors of his own home.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A Convent Wothout God
A prison is a convent without God.
Poverty, Chastity, Obedience
Its precepts are. In this austere abode
None gather wealth of pleasure or of pence.
Woman's light wit, the heart's concupiscence
Are banished here. At the least warder's nod
Thy neck shall bend in mute subservience.
Nor yet for virtue--rather for the rod.
Here a base turnkey novice--master is,
Teaching humility. The matin bell
Calls thee to toil, but little comforteth.
None heed thy prayers or give the kiss of peace.
Nathless, my soul, be valiant. Even in Hell
Wisdom shall preach to thee of life and death.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXV
At last I kneel in Rome, the bourne, the goal
Of what a multitude of laden hearts!
No pilgrim of them all a wearier soul
Brought ever here, no master of dark arts
A spirit vexed with more discordant parts,
No beggar a scrip barer of all dole;
No son, alas, steps sorer with the darts
Of that rebellious sorrow, his sin's toll.
I kneel and make an offering of my care
And folly, and hurt reason. Who would not
In this fair city be the fool of prayer?
Who would not kneel, if only for the lot
Of being born again--a soul forgiven,
Clothed in new childhood and the light of Heaven?
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXVI
I linger on the threshold of my youth.
If you could see me now as then I was,
A fair--faced frightened boy with eyes of truth
Scared at the world yet angry at its laws,
Plotting all plots, a blushing Cataline
Betrayed by his own cheeks, a misanthrope
In love with all things human and divine,
The very fool of fortune and high hope,
You would deny you knew me. Oh, the days
Of our absurd first manhood, rich in force,
Rich in desire of happiness and praise
Yet impotent in its heroic course,
And all for lack of that one worthless thing,
Knowledge of life and love and suffering!
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A Woman’s Sonnets: I
If the past year were offered me again,
With choice of good and ill before me set.
Should I be wiser for the bliss and pain
And dare to choose that we had never met?
Could I find heart those happy hours to miss,
When love began unthought of and unspoke
That first strange day when by a sudden kiss
We knew each other's secret and awoke?
Ah, no! not even to escape the smart
Of that fell agony I underwent,
Flying from thee and my own traitor heart,
Till doubts and dreads and battlings overspent,
I knew at last that thou or love or fate
Had conquered and repentance was too late.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Ambition
I had ambition once. Like Solomon
I asked for wisdom, deeming wisdom fair,
And with much pains a little knowledge won
Of Nature's cruelty and Man's despair,
And mostly learned how vain such learnings were.
Then in my grief I turned to happiness,
And woman's love awhile was all my care,
And I achieved some sorrow and some bliss,
Till love rebelled. Then the mad lust of power
Became my dream, to rule my fellow--men;
And I too lorded it my little hour,
And wrought for weal or woe with sword and pen,
And wounded many, some, alas, my friends.
Now I ask silence. My ambition ends.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XLIV
We came at last, alas! I see it yet,
With its open windows on the upper floor,
To a certain house still stirring, with lights set,
And just a chink left open of the door.
Here my companion stopped and bade me in;
Her dressmaker's, she said. And I, who heard
A sound of women's voices from within,
Shrank back alarmed and ready at a word
From any damsel stoutly to deny.
But ``Madame Blanche,'' she said to ease my fears,
``Is a good soul, and far too wise to pry
Or fancy evil of her customers
At any hour of the night they choose to come,
Much less of me.'' And so I followed dumb.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXI
If I have since done evil in my life,
I was not born for evil. This I know.
My soul was a thing pure from sensual strife.
No vice of the blood foredoomed me to this woe.
I did not love corruption. Beauty, truth,
Justice, compassion, peace with God and man,
These were my laws, the instincts of my youth,
And hold me still, conceal it as I can.
I did not love corruption, nor do love.
I find it ill to hate and ill to grieve.
Nature designed me for a life above
The mere discordant dreams in which I live.
If I now go a beggar on the Earth,
I was a saint of Heaven by right of birth.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: LVIII
It might not be. Some things are possible,
And some impossible for even God.
And Esther had no soul which Heaven or Hell
Could touch by joy or soften by the rod.
She could not really love me. The day came,
How soon, how late, I need not to devise,
When passion prayed its last, and only shame
Stood for my portion in a world grown wise,
And I went forth for ever from her sight
Knowing the good and evil. On that day
I did her wrong by anger. Now life's light
Illumines all, and I behold her gay
As I first knew her in my love purblind,
Dear passionate Esther, soulless but how kind!
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet VII
But where he fared and how, it matters not.
He and his mourning ere a month had run
Were out of mind with all and clean forgot,
Kinsman and friend and foe: save only one,
Only Natalia. She with tightened breath
Heard his name spoken in reproof's vain way
And gave her melancholy soul to death.
Foolish Natalia, who in love's full day
Had spent her grief, had nothing now to give
Of greater woe to her soul's agonies.
Living she yet had hardly dared to live.
She had wept dry the fountains of her eyes,
And never on her sorrow broke a gleam
Of that assuagement tears on others stream.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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