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 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 Maeonides 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.
9 comments:
I've always liked that one. And it's natural for an educated Englishman from the Edwardian era to think of that -- because he'd have spent so much of his youth studying and reading Latin and Greek poets.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: We see a little of that in the gentle and cultured (and FORMIDABLE) Sir Nigel Loring, in your Emberverse books. Sir Nigel was largely raised by his Edwardian grandmother after the early death of his parents.
Btw, because of you, I purchased a copy of A. Conan Doyle's SIR NIGEL. If both you and Anderson liked Doyle's historical fictions, I'm willing to give them a shot.
Paul: And more than a thousand years from now we see Aycharaych quoting from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical Instrument" to an astonished Dominic Flandry.
Ad astra! Sean
I memorized that one long ago:
And yet half a beast is the great God Pan
To laugh as he sits by the river
Making a poet out of a man:
The true Gods weep for the loss and pain
For the reed that will never grow again
As a reed, with the reeds, by the river.
I like "...half a beast is the God Pan..."
A friend threw something at his image of Pan in a rage. I pointed out that Pan would love that.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Both: While I can't say I have MEMORIZED that stanza of EBB's "A Musical Instrument" quoted by Anderson in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, it HAS stuck with me for about 45 years. It was because of that quote that I went to the local public library to look up and read the entire poem. And many years later I got a collection of EBB's poetry partly because it included "Musical."
Mr. Stirling: I fear your memory was a bit at fault. My copy of SELECTED POEMS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING has this for the last stanza of "A Musical Instrument":
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,--
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
And I was interested in Flandry saying he read EBB's poem in TRANSLATION. Meaning the Anglic of his time had become so different from our English that works from our and EBB's time had to be rendered into what was, in effect, another language.
Ad astra! Sean
EBB is every bit as good a poet as her husband, IMHO -- but a very different one.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Alas, I have no recollection of reading any of her husband's works, so I can't comment on them.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Sean!
I read SIR NIGEL not long ago, and posted about it on my blog, so, when you referred previously to your plans to read it, I wondered whether I was your inspiration, but evidently not. The book has its merits, but I should probably warn you that it’s rather anticlerical.
Best Regards,
Nicholas
Kaor, Nicholas!
Thanks for the heads up! Sir Arthur was a lapsed Catholic, so I fear some anti-Catholicism is no surprise. But if I can go by the few references to anything Catholic related in the Holmes stories, he was always gentlemanly about Catholics.
Ad astra and regards! Sean
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