4                                    Carol Z. Rothkopf

generations of poets so well. This traditionalism of Blunden's was
combined with a reverence for nature that was both quintessentially
British and pan of an unbroken chain ot poetry extending back at
least as far as \'ergil's Georgics.
 

Blunden in 1961 on his sixty-fifth birthday

Blunden's intense feeling for the past was apparently obvious to
everyone who knew him. In fact, editor and publisher Sir Rupert
Hart-Davis said that when they first met he was struck by the apt¬
ness of Robert Graves's description of Blunden as looking Uke "a
cross between Julius Caesar and a bird." Hart-Davis went on to note
that Blunden's " .. .tiny frame, his shyness, his quick-darting eyes
and gestures, had all the grace and agility of a wren, while his noble