The collected poems of James Elroy Flecker/Fragments of an Ode to Shelley

Fragments of an Ode to Shelley

I

Since men have always crowned the tomb

With those sweet diadems of doom,

The twinings of memorial flowers,

So that their brother's first few hours

Of waiting in his lonely room

May pass in peace while Time devours

The body's brief and bitter bloom,

The last extortion of sad powers,

And downwards through the grudging soil

The piteous perfumes strain and toil,

II

Let the kind ritual remain:

We seek an emblem of our pain—

The dry scant holly of the shore,

The grass upon the dunes—What more

Can sorrow bring? We cannot drain

The spacious Sea for his rich store

Of coloured weeds that shine in vain

Upon the wide inhuman floor,

The lonely yard where drowned men lie

And gaze through water to white sky.

III

Forgive, thou calm and godlike shade,

The drooping wreath, the flowers that fade,

This passionless pale offering

From one who scarcely dares to sing

His love and praises, being afraid

At the sweet brilliance of thy spring,

Seeing his lute is rudely made,

His thoughts too dull and weak of wing,

More fit for noons that lull and warm

Than for the stress of fire and storm.

IV

The slender boat that stretched her sail

To fly before the sultry gale,

That from her moorings leapt and sped

Before the forest leaves were red,

Before the purple noon was pale,

Round whom delight and fancy spread

Their guardian wings, without avail,

Is shipwrecked, and her captain dead.

The children of the stainless sea

Laid him ashore mysteriously.

V

O none of those who came to mourn

The body cold and water-worn,

Nor any of us in later days

Who walk at evening in soft ways

Could bring thee tribute of the morn

Or any music that repays

The soul of Adonais, borne

To heaven on thy fluted phrase.

Poets have wept; but which of them

Were fit to sing thy requiem?

VI

That song shall wait till delving time

Finds the lost treasures of earth's prime

When moil and tears and dire distress

Shall flee the dawn of joyousness,

When some new monarch of sweet rhyme

Or mild surprising poetess,

Some Sappho in a mood sublime

Or Pindar freed and fetterless,

In a far island in far seas

Shall send their sorrow down the breeze.

• • •

O shining servant of the evening star

Whom no soft footfall of Lethean song

Delighted, but a strong celestial war

To batter down the gates of earthly wrong,

To thee old Rhea yielded up her foison,

Thou rash knight-errant of heroic love,

That dreams and trances, being most vital poison

To whoso looks but dares not live above,

For thee, who wast more bold,

Might lead to earth along light chains of gold,

Lest some rebellious airs of spirit

Should blow each image into windy space

Nor leave it vocal, to inherit

The toil and triumph of our mortal race.

O thou hast shown us legions in the skies,

And passed the earth before us in review

Till shadows came and went before our eyes,

And shafts of dim desire pierced us through,

And draughts of joyous day

And winds that calmly blew

Swift strength and splendour in our dreams, and songs from far away.

• • •

Light and the subtler light of wizard fire,

And winds that strike forth hope on some grand lyre,

And spirits of blue air like April clouds,

And all the water-company that crowds

The river-spaces and dark open sea,

Conspired at his creation: Liberty,

Watching his prowess from her tower above,

Took to her side a royal-wingèd Love.

And when he died and they could do no more

To strengthen him who graced that southern shore

They bade a clearer, stronger sun arise

And drive old darkness from the Italian skies.

• • •

Many there be to-day whose foolish praise

Has dulled the roar of thy old fighting days,

So that thy hymns of intellectual joy

Seem but fine utterance of a wayward boy,

Thy call of war, thy thunderbolts of hate

A madman's cry, that rails against his fate;

Who find in them a vague and phantom truth

Or dim ideal of a lovelorn youth.

• • •

He was too beautiful; he died too young,

Before the mellow season of his prime;

Sweet songs he left, but sweeter songs unsung,

Whose thin ghosts wander out of space and time.

All his philosophy was Love and Hate,

His life a rainbow for the sun to fashion,

His thoughts most royally importunate,

Forged by the beats of elemental passion.

Like some young tressèd tree

That sighs to each . . . wind, so he

Stretched arms to welcome Love, who softly winging

Came down to earth from lands beyond the dawn;

Her strength and gentleness inspired his singing,

Until she stood amazed, from whom 'twas drawn.

Spirit of love, draw near this monument

And veil the ancient glory of thy head,

For he is dead, whose silver days were spent

In thy eternal service, he is dead

And borne aloft away

On gloomy wings outspread

More strong and sure than thy bright plumes,

O mistress of a day!

• • •

[EPODE]

Nothing of him is left us, save this scroll,

The fire-thrown shadow of his silent soul,

The glass whose even rondure is to keep

The immortal country of his mortal sleep.

Where terrors move and angry phantoms cry,

Titans and tyrants in a ragged sky,

Where in tall caves magicians read the rune,

And white limbs glitter in the plenilune;

And where a voice more human, more divine,

Commends a brother dead to Proserpine.

But now that Queen of undivided rest

Reopening the closures of her breast

Has taken our royal-wingèd child of light,

And bathed his forehead in the pool of night.

[Date uncertain, early]