Sunday WW1 Poem...

The theme for this month's WW1 poetry is

HOME

Behind the Closed Eye

by

Francis Edward Ledwidge

1887-1917

I walk the old frequented ways 

That wind around the tangled braes,

I live again the sunny days

Ere I the city knew. 

And scenes of old again are born,

The woodbine lassoing the thorn,

And drooping Ruth-like in the corn

The poppies weep the dew.

Above me in their hundred schools

The magpies bend their young to rules,

And like an apron full of jewels

The dewy cobweb swings.

And frisking in the stream below

The troutlets make the circles flow,

And the hungry crane doth watch them grow

As a smoker does his rings.

Above me smokes the little town,

With its whitewashed walls and roofs of brown

And its octagon spire toned smoothly down

As the holy minds within.

And wondrous impudently sweet,

Half of him passion, half conceit,

The blackbird calls adown the street

Like the piper of Hamelin.

I hear him, and I feel the lure

Drawing me back to the homely moor,

I'll go and close the mountain's door

On the city's strife and din. 

 Francis Edward Ledwidge was an Irish war poet from County Meath in Ireland.. Sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds", he was killed in action at the Battle of Paschendaele in 1917.

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