Modern

James Elroy Flecker

1884–1915


James Elroy Flecker (1884–1915) was an English poet, born in London and educated at Uppingham and at Oxford, who afterwards read Oriental languages at Cambridge. He entered the Levant Consular Service and was posted to Constantinople, Smyrna and Beirut. His verse is Parnassian in manner, with a taste for the East, for classical and legendary subjects, and for polished craft.

Forty-Two Poems (London, J. M. Dent, 1911) gathers poems from his earlier books together with new ones, including the Ballad of Iskander and the War Song of the Saracens. His later volume The Golden Journey to Samarkand appeared in 1913, and his verse play Hassan was published after his death. Suffering from tuberculosis, he died at Davos, Switzerland, in January 1915.

  1. To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence
  2. Riouperoux
  3. The Town without a Market
  4. The Ballad of Camden Town
  5. Felo de Se
  6. Tenebris Interlucentem
  7. Invitation to a Young but Learned Friend
  8. Ballad of the Londoner
  9. The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire
  10. The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire
  11. The Masque of the Magi
  12. The Ballad of Hampstead Heath
  13. The Translator and the Children
  14. Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities
  15. War Song of the Saracens
  16. Joseph and Mary
  17. No Coward's Song
  18. A Western Voyage
  19. Fountains
  20. The Welsh Sea
  21. Oxford Canal
  22. The Ballad of the Student in the South
  23. The Queen's Song
  24. We That Were Friends
  25. My Friend
  26. Ideal
  27. Mary Magdalen
  28. I Rose from Dreamless Hours
  29. Prayer
  30. Gravis Dulcis Immutabilis
  31. Pillage
  32. The Ballad of Zacho
  33. Pavlovna in London
  34. The Sentimentalist
  35. The Ballad of Iskander
  36. The Old Ships
  37. From Catullus: I
  38. From Catullus: III
  39. From Catullus: IV
  40. From Catullus: X
  41. Sirmio
  42. Lucretia
  43. Song in the Night
  44. Glion — Noon
  45. Glion — Evening
  46. Last Love
  47. Fragments of an Ode to Shelley
  48. A New Year's Carol
  49. From Grenoble
  50. Narcissus
  51. Inscription for Arthur Rackham's "Rip Van Winkle"
  52. Envoy
  53. Mignon
  54. Litany to Satan
  55. Hialmar Speaks to the Raven
  56. On Turner's Polyphemus
  57. The Bridge of Fire
  58. The Piper
  59. Heliodora
  60. Love, the Baby
  61. Resurrection
  62. Duke Lumen, Triste Numen, Suave Lumen Luminum
  63. The Lover of Jalalu'ddin
  64. Donde Estan?
  65. Dirge
  66. The Parrot
  67. Lord Arnaldos
  68. A Miracle of Bethlehem
  69. In Memoriam
  70. Opportunity
  71. Don Juan in Hell
  72. The Golden Journey to Samarkand
  73. Gates of Damascus
  74. Yasmin
  75. Saadabad
  76. The Hammam Name
  77. In Phaeacia
  78. Epithalamion
  79. Hyali
  80. Santorin
  81. A Ship, an Isle, a Sickle Moon
  82. Oak and Olive
  83. Brumana
  84. Areiya
  85. Bryan of Brittany
  86. The Painter's Mistress
  87. In Hospital
  88. Taoping
  89. Virgil's Aeneid: Book VI
  90. The Dying Patriot
  91. A Sacred Dialogue
  92. The Blue Noon
  93. A Fragment
  94. Narcissus (second version)
  95. Stillness
  96. The Pensive Prisoner
  97. Hexameters
  98. Philomel
  99. From Jean Moréas' "Stances"
  100. The Princess
  101. Pannyra of the Golden Heel
  102. The Gate of the Armies
  103. November Eves
  104. God Save the King
  105. The Burial in England
  106. The True Paradise
  107. Ode to the Glory of Greece
  108. The Old Warship Ablaze

See James Elroy Flecker in the full archive →