Oxford Canal -- James Elroy Flecker

Guest poem submitted by Tamsin Bacchus:

(Poem #1877) Oxford Canal When you have wearied of the valiant spires of this County Town, Of its wide white streets and glistening museums, and black monastic walls, Of its red motors and lumbering trams, and self-sufficient people, I will take you walking with me to a place you have not seen - Half town and half country - the land of the Canal. It is dearer to me than the antique town: I love it more than the rounded hills: Straightest, sublimest of rivers is the long Canal. I have observed great storms and trembled: I have wept for fear of the dark. But nothing makes me so afraid as the clear water of this idle canal on a summer's noon. Do you see the great telephone poles down in the water, how every wire is distinct? If a body fell into the canal it would rest entangled in those wires for ever, between earth and air. For the water is as deep as the stars are high. One day I was thinking how if a man fell from that lofty pole He would rush through the water toward me till his image was scattered by his splash, When suddenly a train rushed by: the brazen dome of the engine flashed: the long white carriages roared; The sun veiled himself for a moment, and the signals loomed in fog; A savage woman screamed at me from a barge: little children began to cry; The untidy landscape rose to life; a sawmill started; A cart rattled down to the wharf, and workmen clanged over the iron footbridge; A beautiful old man nodded from the first story window of a square red house, And a pretty girl came out to hang up clothes in a small delightful garden. O strange motion in the suburb of a county town: slow regular movement of the dance of death! Men and not phantoms are these that move in light. Forgotten they live, and forgotten die. -- James Elroy Flecker

This poem always comes to mind when I look at still water. It's well ahead
of its time (the very beginning of the 20th century) stylistically, and so
was left out of the Victorian/Edwardian anthologies. Later anthologists do
not seem to look beyond Flecker's few well-known poems.  But a school friend
and I used to walk along the canal on Sundays out from boarding school and
so I have loved the poem from the moment I first read it.  Revisiting it
now, I have noticed the "black monastic walls" that obviously pre-date the
massive clean up of the college buildings after centuries of grime. I also
hadn't previously appreciated the description of a steam train rushing by --
only something I have recently experienced waiting for a change of train in
Swindon when a steam special roared through.  The preserved lines that chug
through the British countryside do their best but they are mopeds to a
Harley Davison when you see, feel and smell the real thing!

Tamsin.

To A Poet A Thousand Years Hence -- James Elroy Flecker

Guest poem submitted by a poster who wishes to remain anonymous

(Poem #1225) 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. -- James Elroy Flecker

Note: Maeonides is Homer.

Have always enjoyed poetry, and I came across this poem first almost 40 years
ago and was struck by what it said to me about how poets could communicate
ideas across space and time; and also about loneliness. It was reinforced in
1995 when I first discovered email and the web - the last paragraph in
particular being particularly poignant, especially since my elder daughter
was about to leave to study overseas. Now that both daughters have left home
and are each half a world away I am even more grateful for the Web.

[Martin adds]

Flecker is a rich and popular source of titles; today's poem provided Clarke
with his "The Cruel Sky", and permeates the following piece:

[broken link] http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,415880,00.html

Yasmin -- James Elroy Flecker

(Poem #1218) Yasmin (A Ghazel) How splendid in the morning grows the lily: with what grace he throws His supplication to the rose: do roses nod the head, Yasmin? But when the silver dove descends I find the little flower of friends Whose very name that sweetly ends I say when I have said, Yasmin. The morning light is clear and cold: I dare not in that light behold A whiter light, a deeper gold, a glory too far shed, Yasmin. But when the deep red light of day is level with the lone highway, And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin; Or when the wind beneath the moon in drifting like a soul aswoon, And harping planets talk love's tune with milky wings outspread, Yasmin, Shower down thy love, O burning bright! For one night or the other night, Will come the Gardener in white, and gathered flowers are dead, Yasmin. -- James Elroy Flecker

Today's wonderfully musical poem is all the more impressive for the ease with
which Flecker handles the difficult form. The ghazal does not fit naturally
into English verse, and attempts to make it do so often end up sounding
strained and artificial - notable, perhaps, for their adherence to the rules of
the game, but at the expense of any real poetic merit.

In 'Yasmin', in delightful contrast, Flecker achieves such an illusion of
effortlessness that the form seems almost native - and a closer look reveals
that this *is* indeed the case. Underlying the lazily meandering couplets and
ubiquitous internal rhymes of the ghazal is the standard 4x4 "ballad metre"
that characterises a good majority of English verse.

The seamless blending of the two forms is amazing - my first reaction to the
poem was "Whoa! So *that's* how it's done". So simple, so obvious - but only
after seeing Flecker in action. I'm by no means saying that this is the One
True Way to write a good, native English ghazal; merely that if I were called
upon to write one, this is how I'd do it. Contrast, for example, Drury's
"Ghazal of the Lagoon" (Poem #1161), a beautiful, atmospheric poem, but one
that seems ever so slightly held back by the form. Flecker takes the form and
makes it sing; the imagery is, perhaps, somewhat lacking when compared to
masterpieces like "The Gates of Damascus", but more, I think, because Flecker
didn't take the poem seriously enough than from any stylistic corner he painted
himself into.

The pedantic will have doubtless already noted that Flecker breaks an important
rule - the first couplet is supposed to have both rhymes ending with the rhyme
and refrain. This is, indeed, a genuine tradeoff caused by Flecker's wish to
have his quatrains-disguised-as-couplets not have a real break between the two
long lines, and one which points strongly to the fact that 'Yasmin' is first
and foremost a poem conforming to the aesthetics of English verse. But so,
note, are Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat, and the latter have vastly overshadowed more
faithful translations that neglected those aesthetics. 'Yasmin' is not quite in
that league, but it is definitely the most unobtrusively natural attempt to
capture the form in English that I've seen.

martin

Links:
  Mark Ryan has listed the main rules of the ghazal form in his commentary on
Poem #1161

War Song of the Saracens -- James Elroy Flecker

Guest poem sent in by Frank O'Shea

(Poem #1145) War Song of the Saracens We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late: We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware! Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer. But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair. From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar, Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum. We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again; We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom. A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid, For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom; And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition, And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong: And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool, And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along: For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a wave, And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song. -- James Elroy Flecker

The recent Andrew Motion poem [Poem #1143] is a good reminder of the reasons
people go to war, all the more relevant in view of the gadarene buildup
going on as I write.

As a follow-up, I suggest the following Flecker warning - surprisingly, it
has not been run before. It's from a different age, but the pale kings of
the sunset who lie in silk and samet might do well to remember that as
Michael Collins put it long ago "The victory is not to those who can inflict
the most but to those who can endure the most" (or something like that).

Think of the billions invested in the Star Wars program and then read the
chilling "The shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate
pool." Scary.

Frank

[Martin adds]

As is often the case with Flecker, I find myself getting swept along by the
sheer magnificent sound and rhythm of the words, and the almost overly-vivid
imagery. This may have elements of warning in it, but in tone and feel it is
very much a war poem. You can almost hear the drums in the background, and
the pounding of horses' hooves. Not a 'pretty' poem, but one with a
visceral, shiver-inducing intensity that grips the reader whether or not he
agrees with the sentiment.

Rioupéroux -- James Elroy Flecker

(Poem #944) Rioupéroux High and solemn mountains guard Rioupéroux --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. O 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 Rioupéroux, And walk with you, and talk with you, like any other boy. -- James Elroy Flecker

Flecker's poetry is consistently delightful, and today's poem is no
exception - the "small untidy village" of Rioupéroux is brought to life with
the same magical touch which first drew me to poems like "The Gates of
Damascus" and "The Golden Road to Samarkand".

Here, despite it's exotic sounding[1] name, Rioupéroux represents a more
down-to-earth retreat, almost the antithesis, with its 'rough' images of
"clog and corduroy" and "tramp the valley", of the evocative dreams of
distant and long-ago Samarkand and Damascus. More to the point, the
roughness in the second verse stands in antithesis to the delicate imagery
in the first, an inversion that does not (despite a superficial tendency to
do so) descend into bathos, but rather combines the two images into a
coherent whole, so that the memory of the 'slender daffodil' superposes
itself upon the girl the narrator wishes to walk with and talk with "like
any other boy". The last line does not shatter the magic of the first verse;
rather, it leaves it intact to gently colour a more immediate present.

Not unexpectedly, Flecker demonstrates once again a superb feel for the
sound and structure of his verse. The poem has a wonderfully musical quality
(somewhat reminiscent of Masefield's "Cargoes") that enhances both the
slightly dreamlike atmosphere of the first verse and the more purposeful
rhythm of the second, and, indeed, serves in some measure to unify them.

[1] at least to my ears - possibly not to those of Flecker's contemporaries

Links:

 A biography of Flecker:
   http://collegiateway.org/csc/flecker.html

 For another interesting treatment of rural France, compare Belloc's
   "October": Poem #226

 Masefield's "Cargoes": Poem #74

 Flecker's poems on Minstrels:
   Poem #509, "The Golden Road to Samarkand"
   Poem #518, "The Gates of Damascus"
   Poem #685, "The Old Ships"

-martin

The Old Ships -- James Elroy Flecker

Guest poem submitted by Aparna:

(Poem #685) The Old Ships I have seen old ships like swans asleep Beyond the village which men call Tyre, With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire; And all those ships were certainly so old Who knows how oft with squat and noisy gun, Questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges, The pirate Genoese Hell-raked them till they rolled Blood, water, fruit and corpses up the hold. But now through friendly seas they softly run, Painted the mid-sea blue or shore-sea green, Still patterned with the vine and grapes in gold. But I have seen, Pointing her shapely shadows from the dawn And image tumbed on a rose-swept bay, A drowsy ship of some yet older day; And, wonder's breath indrawn, Thought I - who knows - who knows - but in that same (Fished up beyond Ææa, patched up new - Stern painted brighter blue -) That talkative, bald-headed seaman came (Twelve patient comrades sweating at the oar) From Troy's doom-crimson shore, And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course. It was so old a ship - who knows, who knows? - And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain To see the mast burst open with a rose, And the whole deck put on its leaves again. -- James Elroy Flecker

The first time I read any Flecker was in the preface to M.M. Kaye's "The Far
Pavilions"... those lovely lines from the The Golden Journey to Samarkand
beginning, "We are the pilgrims Master..."  After I dug up and read the
whole poem, the enchantment was complete and Flecker became and remains one
of my favourite poets.

What I love about this particular poem is the _colours_ I associate with it
...it's replete, drenched with all the richness and colour and patterns I
would expect from a place that sounds as beautiful as Cyprus itself -- "
dipping deep for Famagusta and the hidden sun..."  -- just saying
"Famagusta" out aloud would be enough! Or that amazing juxtaposition of
images ..."questing brown slaves or Syrian oranges..." - absolutely lovely.

Despite everything I still think that "Golden Journey" is the best Flecker
I've read. Besides I might be biased but Samarkand (like caravanserai, as
Martin pointed out some time ago) is one of those words that has loveliness
and dust and distance and magic in every syllable so... :-)

Aparna.

[Biography]

James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) was born in London on November 5, 1884. His
death in 1915 at the age of thirty was "unquestionably the greatest
premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of
Keats" (Macdonald, 1924). The eldest son of the Rev. W. H. Flecker,
Headmaster of Dean Close School, Flecker attended Trinity College, Oxford,
and also Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied oriental languages in
preparation for a consular career. From 1910 to 1913 he held a series of
minor consular posts in Constantinople, Smyrna, and Beirut, and these
appointments reinforced his life-long love for the Mediterranean and the
Middle East. Flecker's health was not robust (he had been diagnosed with
tuberculosis in 1910 shortly after he entered the consular service) and he
was forced to take frequent leaves of absence from his posts, sometimes to
return to England and sometimes to visit sanatoria in Switzerland. He died
in Davos, Switzerland, on January 3, 1915, and is buried in Cheltenham,
England, at the foot of the Cotswold Hills. His grave is marked with a
granite cross inscribed with the poet's own words: "O Lord, restore his
realm to the dreamer." "Flecker had a splendor and breadth of vision
unmatched among young English poets of his time" (Philadelphia North
American). His writings include poetry, short stories, non-fiction prose,
and two plays that were published posthumously. Though sometimes grouped
chronologically with the Georgian poets, Flecker's real literary affinity is
with the French Parnassian school. [Georgian poets are early
twentieth-century poets like Rupert Brooke or W.H. Davies/Flecker but I have
no idea what the French Parnassian school is. Could anyone elucidate? -
Aparna]

     -- http://www1.arcs.ac.at/users/wk/fairway/flecker.html

The Poets' Corner has some stuff from Flecker at
[broken link] http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/gp2_5.html

and there's a photograph at the University of Toronto site
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/authors/flecker.html

[thomas adds]

Aparna suggested revisiting the Silk Road theme which I had mentioned in
yesterday's post; you can read all the poems of the original theme at the
Minstrels website, http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/.

Specifically,

Poem #504 - Li Po, "About Tu Fu"
Poem #506 - Christopher Marlowe, "Lament for Zenocrate"
Poem #509 - James Elroy Flecker, "The Golden Road to Samarkand"
Poem #513 - Jalaluddin Rumi, "The Tavern"
Poem #515 - Robert Graves, "The Persian Version"
Poem #518 - James Elroy Flecker, "The Gates of Damascus"
Poem #522 - Constantine Cavafy, "In Harbor"
Poem #526 - Robert Browning, "A Toccata of Galuppi's"

And in response to Aparna's query:

"Parnassian - French PARNASSIEN, member of a group of 19th-century French
poets headed by Leconte de Lisle, who stressed restraint, objectivity,
technical perfection, and precise description as a reaction against the
emotionalism and verbal imprecision of the Romantics. The poetic movement
led by the Parnassians that resulted in experimentation with metres and
verse forms and the revival of the sonnet paralleled the trend toward
Realism in drama and the novel that became evident in the late 19th century.
Initially taking their themes from contemporary society, the Parnassians
later turned to the mythology, epics, and sagas of exotic lands and past
civilizations, notably India and ancient Greece, for inspiration. The
Parnassians derived their name from the anthology to which they contributed:
Le Parnasse Contemporain (3 vol., 1866, 1871, 1876), edited by Louis-Xavier
de Ricard and Catulle Mendès and published by Alphonse Lemerre. Their
principles, though, had been formulated earlier in Théophile Gautier's
preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), which expounded the theory of art
for art's sake, in Leconte de Lisle's preface to his Poèmes antiques (1852),
and in La Revue Fantaisiste (1860), founded by Mendès. Gautier's Émaux et
camées (1852), a collection of carefully worked, formally perfect poems,
pointed to a new conception of poetry and influenced the works of major
Parnassians such as Albert Glatigny, Théodore de Banville, François Coppée,
Léon Dierx, and José Maria de Heredia. Heredia, the most representative of
the group, looked for precise details, double rhymes, sonorous words, and
exotic names, and concentrated on making the 14th line of his sonnets the
most striking.

The influence of the Parnassians was felt throughout Europe and was
particularly evident in the Modernist movement of Spain and Portugal and in
the Jeune Belgique (Young Belgium) movement. In the late 19th century a new
generation of poets, the Symbolists, followers of Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul
Verlaine, themselves Parnassians in their youth, broke away from precise
description in search of an art of nuance and musical suggestion."

     -- EB

The Gates of Damascus -- James Elroy Flecker

Guest poem submitted by Jairam Panickssery;
one that slots neatly into our theme:

(Poem #518) The Gates of Damascus Four great gates has the city of Damascus And four Great Wardens, on their spears reclining, All day long stand like tall stone men And sleep on the towers when the moon is shining. This is the song of the East Gate Warden When he locks the great gate and smokes in his garden. Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster's Cavern, Fort of Fear, The Portal of Baghdad am I, and Doorway of Diarbekir. The Persian Dawn with new desires may net the flushing mountain spires: But my gaunt buttress still rejects the suppliance of those mellow fires. Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird? Pass not beneath! Men say there blows in stony deserts still a rose But with no scarlet to her leaf--and from whose heart no perfume flows. Wilt thou bloom red where she buds pale, thy sister rose? Wilt thou not fail When noonday flashes like a flail? Leave nightingale the caravan! Pass then, pass all! "Baghdad!" ye cry, and down the billows of blue sky Ye beat the bell that beats to hell, and who shall thrust you back? Not I. The Sun who flashes through the head and paints the shadows green and red, The Sun shall eat thy fleshless dead, O Caravan, O Caravan! And one who licks his lips for thirst with fevered eyes shall face in fear The palms that wave, the streams that burst, his last mirage, O Caravan! And one--the bird-voiced Singing-man--shall fall behind thee, Caravan! And God shall meet him in the night, and he shall sing as best he can. And one the Bedouin shall slay, and one, sand-stricken on the way Go dark and blind; and one shall say--"How lonely is the Caravan!" Pass out beneath, O Caravan, Doom's Caravan, Death's Caravan! I had not told ye, fools, so much, save that I heard your Singing-man. This was sung by the West Gate's keeper When heaven's hollow dome grew deeper. I am the gate toward the sea: O sailor men, pass out from me! I hear you high in Lebanon, singing the marvels of the sea. The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea, The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea. Beyond the sea are towns with towers, carved with lions and lily flowers, And not a soul in all those lonely streets to while away the hours. Beyond the towns, an isle where, bound, a naked giant bites the ground: The shadow of a monstrous wing looms on his back: and still no sound. Beyond the isle a rock that screams like madmen shouting in their dreams, From whose dark issues night and day blood crashes in a thousand streams. Beyond the rock is Restful Bay, where no wind breathes or ripple stirs, And there on Roman ships, they say, stand rows of metal mariners. Beyond the bay in utmost West old Solomon the Jewish King Sits with his beard upon his breast, and grips and guards his magic ring: And when that ring is stolen, he will rise in outraged majesty, And take the World upon his back, and fling the World beyond the sea. This is the song of the North Gate's master, Who singeth fast, but drinketh faster. I am the gay Aleppo Gate: a dawn, a dawn and thou art there: Eat not thy heart with fear and care, O brother of the beast we hate! Thou hast not many miles to tread, nor other foes than fleas to dread; Home shall behold thy morning meal and Hama see thee safe in bed. Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of apricots, And coffee tables botched with pearl, and little beaten brassware pots: And thou shalt sell thy wares for thrice the Damascene retailers' price, And buy a fat Armenian slave who smelleth odorous and nice. Some men of noble stock were made: some glory in the murder-blade; Some praise a Science or an Art, but I like honorable Trade! Sell them the rotten, buy the ripe! Their heads are weak; their pockets burn. Aleppo men are mighty fools. Salaam Aleikum! Safe return! This is the song of the South Gate Holder, A silver man, but his song is older. I am the Gate that fears no fall: the Mihrab of Damascus wall, The bridge of booming Sinai: the Arch of Allah all in all. O spiritual pilgrim rise: the night has grown her single horn: The voices of the souls unborn are half adream with Paradise. To Mecca thou hast turned in prayer with aching heart and eyes that burn: Ah Hajji, wither wilt thou turn when thou art there, when thou art there? God be thy guide from camp to camp: God be thy shade from well to well; God grant beneath the desert stars thou hear the Prophet's camel bell. And God shall make thy body pure, and give thee knowlede to endure This ghost-life's piercing phantom-pain, and bring thee out to Life again. And God shall make thy soul a Glass where eighteen thousand aeons pass. And thou shalt see the gleaming Worlds as men see dew upon the grass. And sons of Islam, it may be that thou shalt learn at journey's end Who walks thy garden eve on eve, and bows his head, and calls thee Friend. -- James Elroy Flecker

Ever since I subscribed to the Minstrels a long time ago (another id, another
time and another country) I've toyed with the idea of sending in a guest poem,
but it always remained just that - an idea. This Monday morning when I opened my
mailbox to find Flecker's poem, it reminded me of this poem that has remained in
my mind over so many years, hence this email.

When I first read Agatha Christie's 'Postern of Fate' I was too young to
understand the deeper connotations of her titles. 'Diabekir', for instance,
sounded like a villain in a kids' comic book... so the snippet of verse that
prefixed the book sounded eerie to me those days and the feeling remained.

"Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard
That silence where the birds are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?"

The confusion that always accompanies fear sounded very logical in this context.
A desert, a caravan and a Gate - a slice of a strange life, and one that many a
child might want to live in his fantasy (no wonder most kids love stories of
gypsies and such).

Jairam.

[thomas adds]

Another very Kiplingesque poem, but it also reminds me of Tolkien's 'Lament for
Boromir': poem #46

Flecker really is very very good; I'm surprised that his verse is so
little-known. Of course, his poetic career is too short and his output too
limited for him to ever be considered a truly great poet, or even a particularly
insightful one; still, he deserves to be more famous than he actually is. He
certainly has a marvellous way with words: the versification in today's poem,
for example, is as close to perfection as you'll see, this side of Tennyson.
Flecker also has that rarest of poetic abilities, the ability to evoke that
ineffable quality called _atmosphere_... whether it's that of the bazaar:
"Take to Aleppo filigrane, and take them paste of apricots,
 And coffee tables botched with pearl, and little beaten brassware pots: "
or the sea:
"The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea,
 The snow-besprinkled wine of earth, the white-and-blue-flower foaming sea. "

Simply beautiful.

The Golden Road to Samarkand -- James Elroy Flecker

The piece that prompted my current theme: an extract from

(Poem #509) The Golden Road to Samarkand HASSAN: Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells, When shadows pass gigantic on the sand, And softly through the silence beat the bells Along the Golden Road to Samarkand. ISHAK: We travel not for trafficking alone; By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We take the Golden Road to Samarkand. MASTER OF THE CARAVAN: Open the gate, O watchman of the night! THE WATCHMAN: Ho, travellers, I open. For what land Leave you the dim-moon city of delight? MERCHANTS (with a shout): We take the Golden Road to Samarkand! (The Caravan passes through the gate) THE WATCHMAN (consoling the women): What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus. Men are unwise and curiously planned. A WOMAN: They have their dreams, and do not think of us. VOICES OF THE CARAVAN (in the distance singing): We take the Golden Road to Samarkand. -- James Elroy Flecker

The theme of wanderlust may be hackneyed, but when it's expressed in phrases as
beautiful as Flecker's, well, it's impossible not to be moved. Every single line
of today's poem is close to perfection... indeed, at times, 'The Golden Road'
approaches the lyrical heights achieved by the likes of Keats and Coleridge [1].

The feelings of those left behind by the travellers to Samarkand are captured
wonderfully well, in the poignant line - "They have their dreams, and do not
think of us". Also noteworthy is Flecker's use of slightly archaic phrasing (for
instance, in the Watchman's words) to convey a sense of remove (both temporal
and spatial) from the present day... very nicely done.

Incidentally, I find this a very Kiplingesque poem - devotees of 'Kim',
especially, will know exactly what I mean.

thomas.

[1] High praise indeed. And sadly, like Keats, Flecker died tragically young -
see the biographical notes below.

[Bio]

James Elroy Flecker, English poet, was born in London on November 5, 1884. His
death in 1915 at the age of thirty was "unquestionably the greatest premature
loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats" (Macdonald,
1924). The eldest son of the Rev. W. H. Flecker, Headmaster of Dean Close
School, Flecker attended Trinity College, Oxford, and also Caius College,
Cambridge, where he studied oriental languages in preparation for a consular
career. From 1910 to 1913 he held a series of minor consular posts in
Constantinople, Smyrna, and Beirut, and these appointments reinforced his
life-long love for the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Flecker's health was
not robust (he had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1910 shortly after he
entered the consular service) and he was forced to take frequent leaves of
absence from his posts, sometimes to return to England and sometimes to visit
sanatoria in Switzerland. He died in Davos, Switzerland, on January 3, 1915, and
is buried in Cheltenham, England, at the foot of the Cotswold Hills. His grave
is marked with a granite cross inscribed with the poet's own words: "O Lord,
restore his realm to the dreamer."

        -- [broken link] http://strong.uncg.edu/flecker.html

[Moreover]

This is the perfect time to share an extract from Italo Calvino's wonderful
wonderful book 'Invisible Cities':

"Proceeding eighty miles into the northwest wind, you reach the city of
Euphemia, where the merchants of seven nations gather at every solstice and
equinox. The boat that lands there with a cargo of ginger and cotton will set
sail again, its hold filled with pistachio nuts and poppy seeds, and the caravan
that has just unloaded sacks of nutmegs and raisins is already cramming its
saddlebags with bolts of golden muslin for the return journey. But what drives
men to travel up rivers and cross deserts to come here is not only the exchange
of wares, which you could find, everywhere the same, in all the bazaars inside
and outside the Great Khan's empire, scattered at your feet on the same yellow
mats, in the shade of the same awnings protecting them from the flies, offered
with the same lying reduction in prices. You do not come to Euphemia only to buy
and sell, but also because at night, by the fires all around the market, seated
on sacks or barrels or stretched out on piles of carpets, at each word that one
man says - such as "wolf", "sister", hidden treasure", "battle", "scabies",
"lovers" - the others tell, each one, his tale of wolves, sisters, treasures,
scabies, lovers, battles. And you know that in the long journey ahead of you,
when to keep awake against the camel's swaying or the junk's rocking, you start
summoning up your memories one by one, your wolf will have become another wolf,
your sister a different sister, your battle other battles, on your return from
Euphemia, the city where memory is traded at every solstice and at every
equinox."

        -- Italo Calvino

About 'Invisible Cities':

"This most beautiful of his books throws up ideas, allusions and breathtaking
imaginative insights on almost every page. Each time he returns from his
travels, Marco Polo is invited by Kublai Khan to describe the cities he has
visited... although he makes Marco Polo summon up many cities for the Khan's
imagination to feed on, Calvino is describing only one city in this book.
Venice, that decaying heap of incomparable splendour, still stands as
substantial evidence of man's ability to create something perfect out of chaos."

        -- Paul Bailey, Times Literary Supplement

Marco Polo may have been talking about Venice, but his words fit Flecker's
description of Samarkand (and the traders who journey there) (not to mention the
romance of the Silk Road) almost perfectly.

[On the theme]

Most of our themes last only for a week or so; this time, though, I'm going to
continue for as long as I can find relevant poems to run. Shouldn't be too hard
a task, actually...

... meanwhile, list-member Vikram Doctor recommends

"Peter Hopkirk's book 'Foreign Devils On The Silk Road'. It's about the
rediscovery of the lost cities of the Silk Route in the Gobi and Takla Makan
deserts in the last century by people like Aurel Stein. Along with the cities
they uncovered huge amounts of book and art treasures, principally in the Caves
of the Thousand Buddhas. The book is totally fascinating and a complete page
turner. Hopkirk has written a series of good books on Central Asia, but this is
the one I enjoyed the most."

Thanks, Vik, I'll definitely try to get my hands on a copy.

[Minstrels Links]

    THE WATCHMAN (consoling the women):
    What would ye, ladies? It was ever thus.
      Men are unwise and curiously planned.
    A WOMAN:
      They have their dreams, and do not think of us.

reminds me of Kipling's 'Harp Song of the Dane Women':

    What is a woman that you forsake her,
    And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
    To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

of which the entirety can be found at poem #143

Another marvellous Kipling evocation of 'The Soul of all the East' is 'The
Buddha at Kamakura, archived at poem #379