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    The Bridge of Fire: "O eyes that strip the souls of men! There came to me the Magdalen"
    The Bridge of Fire: "O eyes that strip the souls of men! There came to me the Magdalen"
    The Bridge of Fire: "O eyes that strip the souls of men! There came to me the Magdalen"
    Ebook53 pages35 minutes

    The Bridge of Fire: "O eyes that strip the souls of men! There came to me the Magdalen"

    By James Elroy Flecker

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    About this ebook

    James Elroy Flecker was born on 5th November 1884, in Lewisham, London.

    Flecker does not seem to have enjoyed academic study and achieved only a Third-Class Honours in Greats in 1906. This did not set him up for a job in either government service or the academic world.

    After some frustrating forays at school teaching he attempted to join the Levant Consular Service and entered Cambridge to study for two years. After a poor first year he pushed forward in the second and achieved First-Class honours. His reward was a posting to Constantinople at the British consulate.

    However, Flecker’s poetry career was making better progress and he was beginning to garner praise for his poems including The Bridge of Fire. Unfortunately, he was also showing the first symptoms of contracting tuberculosis. Bouts of ill health were to now alternate with periods of physical well-being woven with mental euphoria and creativity.

    Before his early death he managed to complete several volumes of poetry, which he continually revised, together with some prose works and plays. It was a small canon of work but on his death on 3rd January 1915, of tuberculosis, in Davos, Switzerland he was described as "unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats".

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPortable Poetry
    Release dateFeb 1, 2018
    ISBN9781787377257
    The Bridge of Fire: "O eyes that strip the souls of men! There came to me the Magdalen"

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      Book preview

      The Bridge of Fire - James Elroy Flecker

      The Bridge of Fire by James Elroy Flecker

      James Elroy Flecker was born on 5th November 1884, in Lewisham, London.

      Flecker does not seem to have enjoyed academic study and achieved only a Third-Class Honours in Greats in 1906.  This did not set him up for a job in either government service or the academic world. 

      After some frustrating forays at school teaching he attempted to join the Levant Consular Service and entered Cambridge to study for two years. After a poor first year he pushed forward in the second and achieved First-Class honours. His reward was a posting to Constantinople at the British consulate.

      However, Flecker’s poetry career was making better progress and he was beginning to garner praise for his poems including The Bridge of Fire.  Unfortunately, he was also showing the first symptoms of contracting tuberculosis. Bouts of ill health were to now alternate with periods of physical well-being woven with mental euphoria and creativity.

      Before his early death he managed to complete several volumes of poetry, which he continually revised, together with some prose works and plays. It was a small canon of work but on his death on 3rd January 1915, of tuberculosis, in Davos, Switzerland he was described as unquestionably the greatest premature loss that English literature has suffered since the death of Keats.

      Index of Contents

      To Jack Beazley

      I—A New Year's Carol

      II—Rioupéroux

      III—The Ballad of the Student in the South

      IV—Mignon

      V—Dorothy

      VI—From Grenoble

      VII—Hialmar Speaks to the Raven

      VIII—We That Were Friends

      IX—Pervigilium

      X—I Have Sung all Love's Great Songs

      XI—On Turner's Polyphemus

      XII—To Francis Thompson

      XIII—The Ballad of Hampstead Heath

      XIV—Ideal

      XV—Arthur Rackham's Rip Van Winkle

      XVI—Mary Magdalen

      XVII—I Rose from Dreamless Hours

      XVIII—The Bridge of Fire

      XIX—Narcissus

      XX—The Golden Head

      XXI—Litany to Satan

      XXII—When I Translated Baudelaire

      XXIII—Prayer

      XXIV—Tenebris Interlucentem

      XXV—Anapaests

      XXVI—Destroyer of Ships, Men, Cities

      XXVII—My Friend

      XXVIII—Oxford Canal

      XXIX—The Old Poet

      XXX—The Young Poet

      XXXI—The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire

      XXXII—The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire

      XXXIII—I am afraid to think about my death

      XXXIV—Envoy

      An Essay on James Elroy Flecker by JC Squire

      James Elroy Flecker – A Short Biography

      James Elroy Flecker – A Concise Bibliography

      TO JACK BEAZLEY

      Poetae tenero, meo sodali

      Gentle Poet, only friend,

      Lover of the stars and sun,

      Since our days are at an end,

      Since the older days are done;

      Since it seems that nevermore

      May I hope to trail my gown

      Rapturously, as before,

      With my friend in Oxford Town;

      Since I so regret a time

      So unprofitably spent,

      Let me send a little rhyme

      From a king in banishment,

      Send a wish that we may see

      Better days, and braver days:

      Florcas, amice mil

      Floreat Praxitelts.

      I

      A New Year's Carol

      Awake, awake! The world is young,

      For all its weary years of thought:

      The starkest fights must

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