I have had a request for more poems written by James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915).

So here are a further two.

They are a little morbid I am afraid - but that's what happens when you become old!

James

NO COWARD'S SONG

I am afraid to think about my death,
When it shall be, and whether in great pain
I shall rise up and fight the air for breath
Or calmly wait the bursting of my brain.

I am no coward who could seek in fear
A folk-lore solace or sweet Indian tales:
I know dead men are deaf and cannot hear
The singing of a thousand nightingales.

I know dead men are blind and cannot see
The friend that shuts in horror their big eyes,
And they are witless -- O, I'd rather be
A living mouse than dead as a man dies.


TENEBRIS INTERLUCENTUM

A linnet who had lost her way
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell,
Till all the ghosts remembered well
The trees, the wind, the golden day.

At last they knew that they had died
When they heard music in that land,
And some one there stole forth a hand
To draw a brother to his side.