James Flecker was a very talented poet. He isn't regarded by the critics or the public today as one of the "greats," like Yeats, Auden, Eliot, or, well, you know the list. But his work is highly respected, and many critics believe that he very well might have achieved true greatness had his life not been cut short by tuberculosis. His poetry is fresh, meaningful, technically excellent, and often exciting.

I had trouble choosing just one poem from many favorites of mine by Flecker, for he was not a one poem poet. In fact, a surprising number of his poems are excellent enough to have been included in many of the most prestigious anthologies of modern English poetry. For example, Philip Larkin's well known and somewhat controversial Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, which has been called "a radical re-assessment of the century's achievement in poetry," contains three of Flecker's poems.

I settled on "The War Song of the Saracens" because I like it, and because it is timely, given America's on-going quarrel with militant Islam. I am not, however, going to make any observations relative to the "meaning" of this poem in the current historic context. One reason for this is that I'm not sure what I would say. But more importantly, I am going to pass on this temptation out of respect for Flecker himself, who was a devoted follower of the Parnassians, a group of late 19^th century French poets who wished to be recognized for their meticulous precision and technique rather than for inciting emotional responses or delivering a message.

Flecker's poetry touched on many subjects, but much of his work focused on the East, where he spent the better part of his short adult life in the British Consular Service, first in Constantinople and later in Beirut. In addition to several volumes of poetry, he wrote a novel and two plays, one that was widely acclaimed, and is still in print. It is called "The Story of Hassan of Baghdad and How He Came To Make The Golden Journey To Samarkand." It contains what are perhaps Flecker's best known poetic lines:

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

You can find the complete text of this play at the wonderful Project Guttenberg website: Go to: ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext03/htshb10.txt Read it. You'll like it. In the meantime, please enjoy the following.