I thought something a little different to end the day and perhaps in future I might post one or two more pieces of poetry. It is nice to escape now and then, I remember when life was all verse, my own as well as others.
A scene from my camera.
"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 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.
By James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915).
good quality beautiful photo
ReplyDeleteI send my soul through time and space
To greet you. You will understand.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe next time I borrow the last verse, won't be the first time.
Try this, made all the more remarkable by the year of its creation.
It is of a man who commutes from the city, (London) and his visits his ''friend'' (amateur hooker) on the way home, that MacNeice speaks.
http://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot.com/2007/03/autumn-journal.html