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larryhammerFor Poetry Monday:
In Phæacia, James Elroy Flecker
Had I that haze of streaming blue,
That sea below, the summer faced,
I’d work and weave a dress for you
And kneel to clasp it round your waist,
And broider with those burning bright
Threads of the Sun across the sea,
And bind it with the silver light
That wavers in the olive tree.
Had I the gold that like a river
Pours through our garden, eve by eve,
Our garden that goes on for ever
Out of the world, as we believe;
Had I that glory on the vine
That splendour soft on tower and town,
I'd forge a crown of that sunshine,
And break before your feet the crown.
Through the great pinewood I have been
An hour before the lustre dies,
Nor have such forest-colours seen
As those that glimmer in your eyes.
Ah, misty woodland, down whose deep
And twilight paths I love to stroll
To meadows quieter than sleep
And pools more secret than the soul!
Could I but steal that awful throne
Ablaze with dreams and songs and stars
Where sits Night, a man of stone,
On the frozen mountain spars
I’d cast him down, for he is old,
And set my Lady there to rule,
Gowned with silver, crowned with gold,
And in her eyes the forest pool.
I don’t run enough Flecker. He’s one of those Georgian poets who died too young (1884-1915) to get carried over into the Modernist canon, which makes him largely forgotten despite being popular for two generations for such poems as “The Golden Journey to Samarkand” and “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence.” Phæacia aka Scheria is the island, otherwise unknown, that was Odysseus’s last stop before Ithaca—yanno, where he met Nausicaa. Flecker wrote this sometime around 1911, when he married his wife Helle, who was Greek.
---L.
Subject quote from A Match, Algernon Swinburne.
In Phæacia, James Elroy Flecker
Had I that haze of streaming blue,
That sea below, the summer faced,
I’d work and weave a dress for you
And kneel to clasp it round your waist,
And broider with those burning bright
Threads of the Sun across the sea,
And bind it with the silver light
That wavers in the olive tree.
Had I the gold that like a river
Pours through our garden, eve by eve,
Our garden that goes on for ever
Out of the world, as we believe;
Had I that glory on the vine
That splendour soft on tower and town,
I'd forge a crown of that sunshine,
And break before your feet the crown.
Through the great pinewood I have been
An hour before the lustre dies,
Nor have such forest-colours seen
As those that glimmer in your eyes.
Ah, misty woodland, down whose deep
And twilight paths I love to stroll
To meadows quieter than sleep
And pools more secret than the soul!
Could I but steal that awful throne
Ablaze with dreams and songs and stars
Where sits Night, a man of stone,
On the frozen mountain spars
I’d cast him down, for he is old,
And set my Lady there to rule,
Gowned with silver, crowned with gold,
And in her eyes the forest pool.
I don’t run enough Flecker. He’s one of those Georgian poets who died too young (1884-1915) to get carried over into the Modernist canon, which makes him largely forgotten despite being popular for two generations for such poems as “The Golden Journey to Samarkand” and “To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence.” Phæacia aka Scheria is the island, otherwise unknown, that was Odysseus’s last stop before Ithaca—yanno, where he met Nausicaa. Flecker wrote this sometime around 1911, when he married his wife Helle, who was Greek.
---L.
Subject quote from A Match, Algernon Swinburne.
no subject
Date: 19 September 2023 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 19 September 2023 03:43 pm (UTC)