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Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses

Chapter 48: When I First Saw Edmée
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About This Book

A collection of verse that shifts between brisk depictions of modern life—motor races and city heat—and intimate lyrical sonnets exploring love, memory, and devotional longing. Classical and medieval references recur alongside pagan pastoral fantasies that imagine escape to woodland Hesperides, while formal experiments include songs, sonnets, ballades, rondeaux and a pantoum. A seasonal sequence maps moods across spring to winter, and a concluding suite treats mortality through elegy and dark humor. The poems balance energetic narrative scenes with reflective, sometimes elegiac meditations on desire, nature, and death.

When I First Saw Edmée

(Villanelle.)

WHEN I first saw Edmée
She was clad all in blue.
A cold colour, you say?
Yes, I thought so, that day,
And my hopes were but few
When I first saw Edmée;
Now, of azure array
I’ve quite altered my view—
A cold colour, you say?
Is the sky cold in May?
How little I knew,
When I first saw Edmée.
All the sweetness there lay
In the shade that means “true!”...
A cold colour, you say?
Ah, my heart’s quite away.
The sad moment I rue
When I first saw Edmée.
A cold colour, you say?...