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    Forty Two Poems: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving"
    Forty Two Poems: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving"
    Forty Two Poems: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving"
    Ebook72 pages49 minutes

    Forty Two Poems: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving"

    By James Elroy Flecker

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    About this ebook

    James Elroy Flecker was born on 5th November 1884, in Lewisham, London.

    Flecker does not seem to have enjoyed academic study and achieved only a Third-Class Honours in Greats in 1906. This did not set him up for a job in either government service or the academic world.

    After some frustrating forays at school teaching he attempted to join the Levant Consular Service and entered Cambridge to study for two years. After a poor first year he pushed forward in the second and achieved First-Class honours. His reward was a posting to Constantinople at the British consulate.

    However, Flecker’s poetry career was making better progress and he was beginning to garner praise for his poems including The Bridge of Fire. Unfortunately, he was also showing the first symptoms of contracting tuberculosis. Bouts of ill health were to now alternate with periods of physical well-being woven with mental euphoria and creativity.

    Before his early death he managed to complete several volumes of poetry, which he continually revised, together with some prose works and plays. It was a small canon of work but on his death on 3rd January 1915, of tuberculosis, in Davos, Switzerland he was described as "unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats".

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9781787377240
    Forty Two Poems: "The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving"

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      Book preview

      Forty Two Poems - James Elroy Flecker

      Forty Two Poems by James Elroy Flecker

      James Elroy Flecker was born on 5th November 1884, in Lewisham, London.

      Flecker does not seem to have enjoyed academic study and achieved only a Third-Class Honours in Greats in 1906.  This did not set him up for a job in either government service or the academic world. 

      After some frustrating forays at school teaching he attempted to join the Levant Consular Service and entered Cambridge to study for two years. After a poor first year he pushed forward in the second and achieved First-Class honours. His reward was a posting to Constantinople at the British consulate.

      However, Flecker’s poetry career was making better progress and he was beginning to garner praise for his poems including The Bridge of Fire.  Unfortunately, he was also showing the first symptoms of contracting tuberculosis. Bouts of ill health were to now alternate with periods of physical well-being woven with mental euphoria and creativity.

      Before his early death he managed to complete several volumes of poetry, which he continually revised, together with some prose works and plays. It was a small canon of work but on his death on 3rd January 1915, of tuberculosis, in Davos, Switzerland he was described as unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats.

      Index of Contents

      To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence

      Riouperoux

      The Town Without a Market

      The Balled of Camden Town

      Mignon

      Felo de se

      Tenebris Interlucentem

      Invitation to a Young but Learned Friend . . .

      Balled of the Londoner

      The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire

      The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire

      The Masque of the Magi

      The Balled of Hampstead Heath

      Litany to Satan

      The Translator and the Children

      Opportunity

      Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities

      War Song of the Saracens

      Joseph and Mary

      No Coward's Song

      A Western Voyage

      Fountains

      The Welsh Sea

      Oxford Canal

      Hialmar Speaks to the Raven

      The Ballad of the Student in the South

      The Queen's song

      Lord Arnaldos

      We That Were Friends

      My Friend

      Ideal

      Mary Magdalen

      I Rose from Dreamless Hours

      Prayer

      A Miracle of Bethlehem

      Gravis Dulcis Immutabilis

      Pillage

      The Ballad of Zacho

      Pavlovna in London

      The Sentimentalist

      Don Juan in Hell

      The Ballad of Iskander

      An Essay on James Elroy Flecker by JC Squire

      James Elroy Flecker – A Short Biography

      James Elroy Flecker – A Concise Bibliography

      TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE

      I who am dead a thousand years,

         And wrote this sweet archaic song,

      Send you my words for messengers

         The way I shall not pass along.

      I care not if you bridge the seas,

         Or ride secure the cruel sky,

      Or build consummate palaces

         Of metal or of masonry.

      But have you wine and music still,

         And statues and a bright-eyed love,

      And foolish thoughts of good and ill,

         And prayers to them who sit above?

      How shall we conquer?  Like a wind

         That falls at eve our fancies blow,

      And old Moeonides the blind

         Said it three thousand years ago.

      O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,

         Student of our sweet English tongue,

      Read out my words at night, alone:

         I was a poet, I was young.

      Since I can never see your face,

         And never shake you by the hand,

      I send my soul through time and space

         To greet you.  You will understand.

      RIOUPEROUX

      High and solemn mountains guard Riouperoux,

      —Small untidy village where the river drives a mill:

      Frail as wood anemones, white and frail were you,

      And drooping a little, like the slender daffodil.

      Oh I will go to France again, and tramp the valley through,

      And I will change these gentle clothes for clog and corduroy,

      And work with the mill-hands of black Riouperoux,

      And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy.

      THE TOWN WITHOUT A MARKET

      There lies afar behind a western hill

      The Town without a Market, white and still;

      For six feet long and not a third

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