One More Poem by Blunden

by ·

Winter: East Anglia

In a frosty sunset
So fiery red with cold
The footballers' onset
Rings out glad and bold;
Then boys from daily tether
With famous dogs at heel
In starlight meet together
And to farther hedges steal;
Where the rats are pattering
In and out the stacks
Owls with hatred chattering
Swoop at the terriers' backs.
And, frost forgot, the chase grows hot
Till a rat's a foolish prize,
But the cornered weasel stands his ground,
Shrieks at the dogs and boys set round,
Shrieks as he knows they stand all round,
And hard as winter dies.

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina

1 Response

  1. Michael Strenk says:
    June 18, 2021 at 12:38 pm

    I can see that I will have to get hold of a volume of Blunden’s poetry.