His poetry is composed of sensations rather than thoughts. What it lacks is intellectual content. A richly packed memory is not the same thing as original thinking, even when the memories are glorified by the artist's own imagination. Yet the death of this young man was a cruel loss to English literature, for his mental development would eventually have kept pace with his gift of song. His cheerful Paganism would, I think, have given place to something deeper and more fruitful. Before he went to Constantinople, he had, as it is a fashion for some modern Occidentals to have, a great admiration for Mohammedanism. A friend reports a rather naïve remark of his, "this intercourse with Mohammedans had led him to find more good in Christianity than he had previously suspected." I have sometimes wondered whether a prolonged residence among Mohammedans might not temper the enthusiasm of those who so loudly insist on the superiority of that faith to Christianity. Mr. Santayana speaks somewhere of "the unconquerable mind of the East." Well, my guess is that this unconquerable mind will some day be conquered by the Man of Nazareth, just as I think He will eventually--some centuries ahead--conquer even us. Flecker died so soon after the opening of the Great War that it is vain to surmise what the effect of that struggle would have been upon his soul. That it would have shaken him to the depths--and perhaps given him the spiritual experience necessary for his further advance--seems not improbable. One of his letters on the subject contains the significant remark, "What a race of deep-eyed and thoughtful men we shall have in Europe--now that all those millions have been baptized in fire!" The last stanza of his poem _A Sacred Dialogue_ reads as follows: Then the black cannons of the Lord Shall wake crusading ghosts And the Milky Way shall swing like a sword When Jerusalem vomits its horde On the Christmas Day preferred of the Lord, The Christmas Day of the Hosts! He appended a footnote in December, 1914, when he was dying: "Originally written for Christmas, 1912, and referring to the first Balkan War, this poem contains in the last speech of Christ words that ring like a prophecy of events that may occur very soon." As I am copying his Note, December, 1917, the English army is entering Jerusalem. Flecker was essentially noble-minded; and without any trace of conceit, felt the responsibility of his talents. There is not an unworthy page in the _Collected Poems_. In a memorable passage, he stated the goal of poetry. "It is not the poet's business to save man's soul, but to make it worth saving."