Forty-Two Poems

Name: Forty-Two Poems
Author: James Elroy Flecker

by James Elroy Flecker

Pages: about 34
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 38 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 21 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

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.
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.
There lies afar behind a western hill The Town without a Market, white and still; For six feet long and not a third as high Are those small habitations. There stood I, Waiting to hear the citizens beneath Murmur and sigh and speak through tongueless teeth. When all the world lay burning in the sun I heard their voices speak to me. Said one: "Bright lights I loved and colours, I who find That death is darkness, and has struck me blind." Another cried: "I used to sing and play, But here the world is silent, day by day."

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Forty-Two Poems

From the opening

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