James Elroy Flecker Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving.

James Elroy Flecker
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?

James Elroy Flecker
And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin.

James Elroy Flecker
I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o'ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire.

James Elroy Flecker
We are the Pilgrims, master: we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

James Elroy Flecker
For pines are gossip pines the wide world through
And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.

James Elroy Flecker
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.

James Elroy Flecker
When the great markets by the sea shut fast
All that calm Sunday that goes on and on:
When even lovers find their peace at last,
And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

James Elroy Flecker
The dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea.

James Elroy Flecker
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

James Elroy Flecker
West of these out to seas colder than the Hebrides
I must go
Where the fleet of stars is anchored and the young
Star captains glow.

James Elroy Flecker
Four great gates has the city of Damascus …
Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster Cavern, Fort of Fear …
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?

James Elroy Flecker
A ship, an isle, a sickle moon With few but with how splendid stars The mirrors of the sea are strewn Between their silver bars!

James Elroy Flecker
Half to forget the wandering and pain, Half to remember days that have gone by, And dream and dream that I am home again!

James Elroy Flecker
We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, We Poets of the proud old lineage Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.

James Elroy Flecker