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To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence


By James Elroy Flecker


 

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 in 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 Maeonides 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.


 

James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) was born in London the eldest son of a Headmaster. He studied Oriental Languages at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities before commencing a career in the Foreign Office where he had postings in Constantinople, Smyrna and Beirut. His health unfortunately was never good, and he was forced to take regular leave of absence from his postings to return to England and Switzerland for treatment. He died in Davos, Switzerland, on January 3rd, 1915, at the tender age of thirty and is buried in Cheltenham, England, at the foot of the Cotswold Hills. His death was described by one contemporary (MacDonald, 1924) as "unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats".

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