James Elroy Flecker quotes:

For lust of knowing what should not be known, we take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Thy impudence has a monstrous beauty, like the hindquarters of an elephant.

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep.

For pines are gossip pines the wide world through And full of runic tales to sigh or sing.

When the great markets by the sea shut fastAll that calm Sunday that goes on and on:When even lovers find their peace at last,And Earth is but a star, that once had shone.

We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, We Poets of the proud old lineage Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.

I look down the farthest side of the mountain,

And some to Meccah turn to pray, and I toward thy bed, Yasmin.

Half to forget the wandering and pain, Half to remember days that have gone by, And dream and dream that I am home again!

The poet's business is not to save the soul of man but to make it worth saving.

A ship, an isle, a sickle moon With few but with how splendid stars The mirrors of the sea are strewn Between their silver bars!

But have you wine and music still,And statues and a bright-eyed love,And foolish thoughts of good and ill,And prayers to them who sit above?

It is not the poet's business to save man's soul but to make it worth saving . . . However, few poets have written with a clear theory of art for art's sake, it is by that theory alone that their work has been, or can be, judged; -and rightly so if we remember that art embraces all life and all humanity, and sees in the temporary and fleeting doctrines of conservative or revolutionary only the human grandeur or passion that inspires them.

For the spear was a desert physician, That cured not a few of ambition, And drave not a few to perdition, With medicine bitter and strong.