To a poet a thousand years hence

To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence

          "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence" is a message from the poet, James Elroy Flecker, to a poet  living in the distant future: "a thousand years hence." The poem is quite short and basic in its format.  It has six quatrains. each following an abab rhyme scheme, although some rhymes are imperfect. It is also traditional in it use of iambic tetrameter for each line.
          The first stanza sets the theme of the poem. It states imagines himself dead a thousand years, and that another poet is now reading his work.  Flecker "sends [his] words as messengers," for he knows he cannot live a thousand years.  Flecker also acknowledges that his audience is likely a sympathetic one since he is writing to a fellow poet, not a business man or a labourer.
         The second and third stanzas describe how the poet does not care if the reader has created grand pieces of engineering or machinery over the thousand year span.  He does not care if people :ride secure the cruel sky: or have built "consummate palaces."  Instead, he wonders if the world still have "wine and music" and "bright-eyed love" and all the things that he feels make life worthwhile in his own lifetime.
          In the fourth stanza, Flecker acknowledges that things like war and conflict have been around for millenia and that he suspects it will still continue in the future.  He reflects on "old Maeonides the blind" which is a reference to Homer, the writer of The Iliad, the epic story of the Trojan War.  That war took place "three thousand years" before Flecker wrote this poem, so he has no reason to think that war will cease a thousand years into his future.
          The final two stanzas deal with Flecker's desire to live into the future through his poetry.  He calls he future reader his "friend" and him to "Read out my words at night, alone:" and remember that "I was a poet, I was young."  While Flecker cannot see or meet his future reader's face, he believes that through his poem he can "send his soul through time and space/ To greet you."  Because he is writing to a fellow poet, he knows his reader "will understand" Flecker's message.