BD. Edmund Blunden

76. Edmund Blunden Number. Eigo seinen 96/4 (April 1950).

Reprints To the Citizens of Ito (55d), From the japanese Inn Window (65), and Sakurajima (67).

a. Flowers of the Rock. Flowers thriving on a rock inspire the observation that ‘the seeds / Of thought’ and ‘of flowering fancy too’ have ‘found in many a breast of stone / . . . / Their laughing livelihood’. Reprinted in 144, and with slight emendation in 160, a version dated 16 January 1950 that Okada (191) believes is the original. That version includes a dedication to Torao Ueda, who had been Blunden’s student at Tokyo Imperial University in the twenties and by the time the poem was composed was the director of the publishing house Kenkyusha.

b. Here gathered in this kindly town. Brief occasional verse written with best wishes for a Mr. and Mrs. Uchida of Itô, 8 July 1948.