Edward James - Writings

Writings

I have seen such beauty as one man has seldom seen;
therefore will I be grateful to die in this little room,
surrounded by the forests, the great green gloom
of trees my only gloom - and the sound, the sound of green.
Here amid the warmth of the rain, what might have been
is resolved into the tenderness of a tall doom
who says: 'You did your best, rest' - and after you the bloom
of what you loved and planted still will whisper what you mean.
And the ghosts of the birds I loved, will attend me each a friend;
like them shall I have flown beyond the realm of words.
You, through the trees, shall hear them, long after the end
calling me beyond the river. For the cries of birds
continue, as - defended by the cortege of their wings -
my soul among strange silences yet sings.

—Edward James, Poet 1907 - 1984

• E. James, "The Bones of my Hand", privately printed, London 1930.
• E. James, The Glass Omnibus, privately printed, London 1934.
• E. James, The Gardener Who Saw God, 1937
• Edward James wrote four poems "Sécheresses" and Francis Poulenc put them in music for choir 4 mixt voices and piano ro orchestra in 1937
• George Melly (ed), Swans Reflecting Elephants, My Early Years, Autobiography of Edward James (Weidenfeld, London 1982).