The Translator And The Children

While I translated Baudelaire,
Children were playing out in the air.
Turning to watch, I saw the light
That made their clothes and faces bright.
I heard the tune they meant to sing
As they kept dancing in a ring;
But I could not forget my book,
And thought of men whose faces shook
When babies passed them with a look.

They are as terrible as death,
Those children in the road beneath.
Their witless chatter is more dread
Than voices in a madman's head:
Their dance more awful and inspired,
Because their feet are never tired,
Than silent revel with soft sound
Of pipes, on consecrated ground,
When all the ghosts go round and round.

James Elroy Flecker

James Elroy Flecker was an English poet and playwright born in London. He is best remembered for his poem "The Golden Journey to Samarkand" and his plays. Flecker was associated with the neo-romantic movement, and his works often explored themes of travel and classical antiquity. He died of tuberculosis at a young age, cutting short a promising literary career.

James Elroy Flecker

Pavlovna In London

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

A Miracle Of Bethlehem

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

The Ballad Of Hampstead Heath

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

The Masque Of The Magi

James Elroy Flecker, Simple Poetry

English

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Children

Come to me, O ye children!
    For I hear you at your play,
And the questions that perplexed me
    Have vanished quite away.

Ye open the eastern windows,
    That look towards the sun,
Where thoughts are singing swallows
    And the brooks of morning run.

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
    In your thoughts the brooklet's flow,
But in mine is the wind of Autumn
    And the first fall of the snow.

Ah! what would the world be to us
    If the children were no more?
We should dread the desert behind us
    Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,
    With light and air for food,
Ere their sweet and tender juices
    Have been hardened into wood,--

That to the world are childre...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Pavlovna In London

I listened to the hunger-hearted clown,
Sadder than he: I heard a woman sing, -
A tall dark woman in a scarlet gown -
And saw those golden toys the jugglers fling.
I found a tawdry room and there sat I,
There angled for each murmur soft and strange,
The pavement-cries from darkness and below:
I watched the drinkers laugh, the lovers sigh,
And thought how little all the world would change
If clowns were audience, and we the Show.

What starry music are they playing now?
What dancing in this dreary theatre?
Who is she with the moon upon her brow,
And who the fire-foot god that follows her? -
Follows among those unbelieved-in trees
Back-shadowing in their parody of light
Across the little cardboard balustrade;
And we, like that poor Faun who pipes and f...

James Elroy Flecker

The Seven Old Men

Ant-like city, city full of dreams,
where the passer-by, at dawn, meets the spectre!
Mysteries everywhere are the sap that streams
through the narrow veins of this great ogre.


One morning, when, on the dreary street,
the buildings all seemed heightened, cold
a swollen rivers banks carved out to greet,
(their stage-set mirroring an actors soul),


the dirty yellow fog that flooded space,
arguing with my already weary soul,
steeling my nerves like a hero, I paced
suburbs shaken by the carts drum-roll.


Suddenly, an old man in rags, their yellow
mirroring the colour of the rain-filled sky,
whose looks alone prompted alms to flow,
except for the evil glittering of his eye,


appeared. Youd have thought his eyeballs

Charles Baudelaire

The Seven Old Man

City of swarming, city full of dreams
Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller's sleeve!
Mysteries everywhere run like the sap
That fills this great colossus' conduits.

One morning, while along the sombre street
The houses, rendered taller by the mist,
Seemed to be towering wharves at riverside,
And while (our stage-set like the actor's soul)

A dirty yellow steam filled all the space,
I followed, with a hero's iron nerve
To set against my spirit's lassitude,
The district streets shaken by rumbling carts.

Then, an old man whose yellowed rags
Were imitations of the rainy sky,
At whose sight charity might have poured down,
Without the evil glitter in his eyes,

Appeared quite suddenly to me. I'd say
His eye was steeped in gall; his gl...

Charles Baudelaire

The Seven Old Men

O swarming city, city full of dreams,
Where in a full day the spectre walks and speaks;
Mighty colossus, in your narrow veins
My story flows as flows the rising sap.

One morn, disputing with my tired soul,
And like a hero stiffening all my nerves,
I trod a suburb shaken by the jar
Of rolling wheels, where the fog magnified
The houses either side of that sad street,
So they seemed like two wharves the ebbing flood
Leaves desolate by the river-side. A mist,
Unclean and yellow, inundated space
A scene that would have pleased an actor's soul.
Then suddenly an aged man, whose rags
Were yellow as the rainy sky, whose looks
Should have brought alms in floods upon his head,
Without the misery gleaming in his eye,
Appeared before me; and his pupils seemed

Charles Baudelaire

Les Enfants Perdus.

        What has become of the children all?
            How have the darlings vanished?
        Fashion's pied piper, with magical air,
        Has wooed them away, with their flaxen hair
        And laughing eyes, we don't know where,
            And no one can tell where they're banished.

        "Where are the children?" cries Madam Haut-ton,
            "Allow me, my sons and daughters,
        Fetch them, Annette!" What, madam, those?
        Children! such exquisite belles and beaux:
        True, they're in somewhat shorter clothes
            Than the most of Dame Fashion's supporters.

        Good day, Master Eddy! Young man about town,
            A merchant down in the swamp's son;
        In a neat little book he makes neat little bets:
   ...

George Augustus Baker, Jr.