John Squire

“ As for English criticism, can it not learn from the Parnassian, or any tolerable theory of poetic art, to examine the beauty and not the 'message' of poetry."
"It is not [he said] 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 his declaration that poetry should not be written to carry a message but to embody a perception of beauty did not preclude a message in the poetry. His last poems, including "The Burial in England," may be restrained but are scarcely impersonal, may not be didactic but are none the less patriotic. He need not, in fact, be pinned to every word of his preface separately. The drift of the whole is evident. He himself, like other people, would not have been where he was but for the Romantic movement; but he thought that English verse was in danger of decomposition. ”

“ Though many of his own poems show the "tendency to use traditional forms and even to employ classical subjects," Flecker did not, it must be observed, dogmatize as to choice of subject or generalize too widely. The Parnassians were not everything to him, nor were those older poets who had resembled them. It was as a corrective that he recommended the study of this particular group to his English contemporaries. It is arguable that most of his major contemporaries–one might instance Mr. Bridges and Mr. Yeats–are anything but chaotic, extravagant, careless, or didactic. ”

“ He is apt to be dramatic and objective rather than intimate. The enemies of the Parnassians have accused them of cultivating unemotional frigidity and upholding an austere view of perfection. The unanswerable answers to all criticism are the works of Hérédia, Leconte de Lisle, Samain, Henri de Régnier, and Jean Moréas. Compare the early works of the latter poet, written under the influence of the Symbolists, with his 'Stances' if you would see what excellence of theory can do when it has genius to work on. ”

“ His most fantastic visions are solid and highly coloured and have hard edges. His imagination rioted in images, but he kept it severely under restraint, lest the tropical creepers should stifle the trees. Only occasionally, in his later poems, a reader may find the language a little and the images heaped so profusely as to produce an effect of obscurity and, sometimes, of euphuism. But these poems, it must be remembered, are precisely those which the poet himself did not finally revise. ”

“ Flecker began writing verse early, and one of his existing notebooks contains a number of poems written whilst he was at Uppingham. The original poems composed, at school and at Oxford, up to the age of twenty are not very remarkable. There is nothing unusual in some unpublished lines written on the school chapel bell at the end of his last term, and little in "Danae's Cradle-Song for Perseus" (1902) . A typical couplet is
Waste of the waves! O for dawn! For a long low level of shore! Better be shattered and slain on the reef than drift evermore. ”

“ Even his decadent poems had improved: poor as are most of the poems in "The Bridge of Fire," they are almost all above the level of Oxford poetry, and there are occasional verses which forecast some of his mature work. ”

“ That is the bare outline of Flecker’s life and work. The present Introduction does not pretend to supply a "personal memoir," for which materials have not been collected; and the work of estimating Flecker’s art and "placing" him in relation to his contemporaries may be left to others. But one may usefully give a few more biographical details and a short analysis of the poet’s artistic attitude and methods of work. In person Flecker was tall, with blue eyes, black, straight hair, and dark complexion. ”

“ Twenty of the poems in this edition have never been published before, or have appeared only in periodicals. These may be distinguished by the dates which are appended beneath them. The whole of the poems published in book form during the poet’s lifetime are reprinted with the exception of seven lyrics which there is reason to believe he did not desire to perpetuate. ”

“ Although he never really finished the longer version of the 'Burial' which he had projected, the alterations and additions he made that evening—'Toledo-wrought neither to break nor bend' was one of the latter—were in the main improvements and in no way suggested that his end was so near. ”

“ In December 1912 he took a month’s leave in England and Paris, returning to Beyrout in January 1913. In March he again fell ill, and after a few weeks on the Lebanon (Brumana) he went to Switzerland, where, acting on his doctors’ advice, he remained for the last eighteen months of his life. ”