TO A POET A THOUSAND YEARS HENCE
by: James Elroy Flecker
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 Mæonides 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.
Wonderful. Very, very wonderful.
Makes me think of what it would mean to find Homer and tell him, “Your words will move the hearts of men and women who will not be born for three thousand years.”
Then again, if I were told something like that, I doubt I’d have the nerve to write at all. So perhaps it’s for the best.
The promise of immortality is an old trope among poets. They used to look forward to living on in their works. Shakespeare promised immortality to the addressee in “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Ovid’s concluding words of the Metamorphoses also look to the future:
Iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis
nec poterit ferrum nec edax abolere vetustas.
cum volet, illa dies, quae nil nisi corporis huius
ius habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat aevi:
parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis 875
astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum,
quaque patet domitis Romana potentia terris,
ore legar populi, perque omnia saecula fama,
siquid habent veri vatum praesagia, vivam.
My poor, poor translation:
And now the work is done, that Jove’s ire nor flame,
nor sword erase, nor the ages wear away.
Let the day come that has power only over my body
and bring to an end my unknown span of time;
The better part of me will be carried high beyond
the distant stars, where my name will never be erased,
and through the lands Rome’s power extends,
in the mouths of the people, famed through all ages,
if there is truth in the prophecies of poets, I shall live.
If, on the other hand, someone were to tell me that my works would be taught four hundred years hence by a bunch of hack teachers, and pulled apart by incompetent professors as proof of their idiotic theories, and bore a bunch of harmless children to tears, then I might just lay aside my quill, if I had a quill in the first place.
I remember his poem from Sandman, though at the time I I made no effort to find out about the poet.
When I saw his death date I thought, my God, another poet-martyr of the great war; but it was disease that took him.
Thank for posting this; I want to read more of him.