Active Users:538 Time:25/11/2024 02:04:57 AM
My favourite poet in English is a relatively unknown fellow called James Elroy Flecker. Legolas Send a noteboard - 23/03/2010 07:11:03 PM
He tends to write rather nostalgic, romantic stuff, often connected to Antiquity and/or Islamic culture, being a Classicist and Orientalist by trade, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Possibly not entirely what you like, considering the conspicuous absence of any English-language 18th or 19th century poets in your list, but oh well... :P

See link for an anthology of his stuff on Project Gutenberg, although that leaves out his famous Gates of Damascus (well, famous is relative... but Agatha Christie referred to it in one of her books, anyway :P ), which you can find at http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.com/2000/08/gates-of-damascus-james-elroy-flecker.html


His most famous poem is probably the first one in the anthology, called "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 Moeonides 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."





Other than Flecker, I really like the few poems I know by Yeats (his famous two, i.e. "No Second Troy" and that one with the "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" line of which the title now escapes me), and some really famous stuff like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner that I doubt needs further recommendation. ;)

I could recommend some Dutch-language poets - you might like some of Achterberg's better religiously themed stuff, and I refuse to believe anyone can dislike van Ostaijen - but I'm afraid there's not much by them that is translated.
Forty-Two Poems at Project Gutenberg
This message last edited by Legolas on 23/03/2010 at 07:12:02 PM
Reply to message
Poetry: care to recommend me some? - 23/03/2010 06:57:49 PM 911 Views
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester? - 23/03/2010 07:04:39 PM 724 Views
Re: Rebekah is not prepubescent. Ergo, no. *NM* - 23/03/2010 08:06:33 PM 310 Views
Hey. Rochester is actually quite good *NM* - 23/03/2010 08:17:50 PM 291 Views
And amazingly explicit. *NM* - 23/03/2010 08:35:13 PM 314 Views
Yes - 23/03/2010 08:37:55 PM 737 Views
My favourite poet in English is a relatively unknown fellow called James Elroy Flecker. - 23/03/2010 07:11:03 PM 997 Views
Baudelaire? - 23/03/2010 08:42:42 PM 662 Views
What languages do you speak? - 23/03/2010 08:51:18 PM 650 Views
Some Spanish and German - 23/03/2010 08:57:59 PM 676 Views
Read Heine if you read German - 23/03/2010 09:01:54 PM 684 Views
Poe - 23/03/2010 10:46:56 PM 619 Views
Pablo Neruda? *NM* - 23/03/2010 09:11:26 PM 326 Views
Borges! - 23/03/2010 09:12:06 PM 646 Views
Re: Borges! - 23/03/2010 09:14:37 PM 617 Views
Re: Very tedious poetry. - 24/03/2010 12:27:04 AM 698 Views
This is why I will never recommend А́нна Ахма́това/ Anna Akhmatova to anyone who - 24/03/2010 04:16:07 PM 725 Views
Heine is very lyrical, though. - 24/03/2010 06:59:58 PM 618 Views
In their original tongues... - 23/03/2010 09:52:32 PM 718 Views
Anything Byron gets my vote, Don Juan in particular. *NM* - 23/03/2010 10:32:32 PM 285 Views
Emily Dickinson? *NM* - 23/03/2010 10:37:19 PM 306 Views
Blake? - 23/03/2010 10:39:21 PM 586 Views
I loathe her *NM* - 24/03/2010 04:41:57 AM 312 Views
...why? *NM* - 24/03/2010 08:06:39 AM 294 Views
Re: ...why? - 25/03/2010 04:48:48 AM 635 Views
Re: ...why? - 25/03/2010 07:56:02 AM 677 Views
Ah, the certainty of youth! - 25/03/2010 08:02:32 AM 683 Views
Keats - 24/03/2010 04:41:38 AM 682 Views
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. - 24/03/2010 04:13:54 PM 847 Views
it is a good one - 24/03/2010 08:22:46 PM 670 Views
I detest cats. I am a total dog person. *NM* - 24/03/2010 10:19:26 PM 289 Views
heh. for some reason I always thought it'd be the opposite - 25/03/2010 12:10:55 PM 634 Views
Re: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot. - 24/03/2010 11:25:51 PM 721 Views
Hopkins. - 24/03/2010 04:43:08 PM 674 Views
Edgar Lee Master - 24/03/2010 08:03:49 PM 753 Views
Sylvia Plath. - 24/03/2010 11:11:27 PM 713 Views
Re: Poetry: care to recommend me some? - 25/03/2010 03:29:57 AM 813 Views
Unsurprisingly, I like simple poetry. - 25/03/2010 03:52:11 AM 685 Views
e e cummings and Poe are two of my favorites *NM* - 26/03/2010 04:13:13 AM 295 Views
Symborska. - 26/03/2010 12:24:50 PM 770 Views
I read a couple of Edward Thomas poems recently that I really liked - 26/03/2010 03:14:31 PM 738 Views
Thanks, all, for your recommendations. - 27/03/2010 10:57:31 AM 651 Views

Reply to Message