Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXIII
Nor later, when with her my childhood died,
Was life less sealed to me. The Church became
My guardian next and mother deified,
Who lit within me a more subtle flame
Of constancy, and clothed me in her mood.
No sound, no voice within that sanctuary
Told me of common evil. Unsubdued
And vast and strange, a thing from which to flee,
The world lay there without us. We within,
Fenced in and folded safe in our strong home,
Knew nothing of the sorrow and the sin.
'Tis no small matter to have lived in Rome,
In the Church's very bosom and abode,
Cloistered and cradled there, a child of God.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A Woman’s Sonnets: VII
What have I gained? A little charity?
I never more may dare to fling a stone
At any weakness, nor make boast that I
A better fence or fortitude had shown;
Some learning? I in love's lore have grown wise,
Plucked apples of the evil and the good,
Made one short trespass into Paradise
And known the full taste of forbidden food.
But love, if it be gold, has much alloy,
And I would gladly buy back ignorance,
But for the thought which still is my heart's joy
That once your life grew happier in my hands,
That in your darkest and most troubled hour
I had, like Jesse's son, a soothing power.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XI
Beyond her sat a second monster. She
In shape and sense was undisguisedly real,
An ox--eyed queen of full--fed majesty
And giant height and comeliness ideal.
She too her tale related, as was due,
In measured tones, her age, her birth, her name,
Bourgeois her parents, friends of order too,
And good Imperialists of honest fame,
Her age eighteen, her height seven feet, her waist
An ell and more in its circumference,
Her leg above the knee, and where was placed
Its point of full development. . . The sense
Of the rest I lost, for laughing half aloud
Again a woman touched me in the crowd.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: IX
I stopped, I listened, and I entered in,
With half--a--dozen more, that sight to see.
``The Booth of Beauty,'' 'twas a name of sin
Which seemed to promise a new mystery.
There was a crowd already in the place,
And 'twixt me and the stage, now darkly hid,
The gathering evening had come down apace,
And all was dim within and overspread.
I know not by what instinct or mute proof
Of Providence it was, but this is true,
Even as I stepped 'neath that ignoble roof,
A prescience warned me there of portents new,
And a voice spoke with no uncertain sound
Warning me back as from ungodly ground.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXVI
The majesty of Rome to me is nought;
The imperial story of her conquering car
Touches me only with compassionate thought
For the doomed nations faded by her star.
Her palaces of Caesars tombstones are
For a whole world of freedoms vainly caught
In her high fortune. Throned was she in war;
By war she perished. So is justice wrought.
A nobler Rome is here, which shall not die.
She rose from the dead ashes of men's lust,
And robed herself anew in chastity,
And half redeemed man's heritage of dust.
This Rome I fain would love, though darkly hid
In mists of passion and desires scarce dead.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Natalia’s Resurrection: Sonnet XXI
But when they had gone past him every one,
With new resolve begotten of his dream,
Adrian arose and followed where the stone
Yawned for his love, and there unseen by them
In the dark chauntry he beheld them lay
Her body in the grave with his own heart.
A bitter jest it seemed to him that they
Should all stand near and only he apart,
And through his soul a wind of anger swept
When any in the sad crowd chanced to be
Betwixt him and the woman he so wept,
And oftentimes he cursed them bitterly
That hands not his should touch her in the tomb,
Waiting till night and his revenge should come.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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A New Pilgrimage: Sonnet XXXIV
O fool! O false! I have abandoned Heaven,
And sold my wealth for metal of base kind.
O frail disciple of a fair creed given
For human hope when all the world was blind!
What was my profit? Freedom of the mind,
A little pleasure of the years, some scars
Of lusty youth, and some few thoughts enshrined
In worthier record of my manhood's years.
All else is loss, and unredeemed distress;
The voiceful seasons uninvited come,
And bring their tribute of new flowers, and pass:
Only the reason of the world is dumb;
Nor does God any more by word or sign
Speak to our rebel hearts of things divine.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XIII
A second warning, nor unheeded. Yet
The thought appealed to me as no strange thing,
Pure though I was, that love impure had set
Its seal on that fair woman in her Spring.
Her broken beauty did not mar her grace
In form or spirit. Nay, it rather moved.
It seemed a natural thing for that gay face
It should have known and suffered and been loved.
It kindled in me, too, to view it thus,
A mood of daring which was more than mine,
And made my shamefaced heart leap valorous,
And fired its courage to a zeal divine.
All this, in one short instant, as I gazed
Into her eyes, admiring, yet amazed.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXII
You know the story of my birth, the name
Which I inherited for good and ill,
The secret of my father's fame and shame,
His tragedy and death on that dark hill.
You know at least what the world knows or knew,
For time has taken half the lookers--on,
As it took him, and leaves his followers few,
And those that loved him scarce or almost none.
To me, his son, there had remained the story,
Told and retold by her who knew it best,
A mystery of love, perhaps of glory,
A heritage to hold and a bequest.
Ah, how it loved him, that sad woman's heart,
What faith was hers and what a martyr's part!
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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Esther, A Sonnet Sequence: XXV
My childhood, then, had passed a mystery
Shrouded by death, my boyhood a shut thing.
The passion of my soul as it grew free
With 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 blue
Of life's great vault of tears which was its doom,
A duty of revenge some day for blood.
Enough! You know I held me from the press
To whom base things are nothing, that I stood
Parted from this world's weekday wickedness
By a whole legend of romance sublime,
Perhaps by the dead virtue of a crime.
poem by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
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