S18E2: "Forefathers" by Edmund Blunden

The Well Read Poem

Welcome back to Season 18 of the Well Read Poem. During this season, we are offering our listeners six poems about family life. The poems selected for this season are quite various in style and manner, and have been chosen for the light they shed on relationships between parents and children, between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. We hope that these readings will, in their small way, add a measure of comfort and happiness to the lives of our audience during these winter months.

Today's poem is "Forefathers" by Edmund Blunden. Poem reading begins at timestamp .

Forefathers

by Edmund Blunden

Here they went with smock and crook, Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade, Here they mudded out the brook And here their hatchet cleared the glade: Harvest-supper woke their wit, Huntsmen's moon their wooings lit. From this church they led their brides, From this church themselves were led Shoulder-high; on these waysides Sat to take their beer and bread. Names are gone - what men they were These their cottages declare. Names are vanished, save the few In the old brown Bible scrawled; These were men of pith and thew, Whom the city never called; Scarce could read or hold a quill, Built the barn, the forge, the mill. On the green they watched their sons Playing till too dark to see, As their fathers watched them once, As my father once watched me; While the bat and beetle flew On the warm air webbed with dew. Unrecorded, unrenowned, Men from whom my ways begin, Here I know you by your ground But I know you not within - There is silence, there survives Not a moment of your lives. Like the bee that now is blown Honey-heavy on my hand, From his toppling tansy-throne In the green tempestuous land - I'm in clover now, nor know Who made honey long ago.