# 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
    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]