The Poems of Ernest Dowson

By Ernest Dowson

This vintage book contains Ernest Dowson’s 1905 collection of poetry, “The Poems of Ernest Dowson”. A fantastic compendium of diverse poesy, this volume would make for a worthy addition to any collection, and is highly recommended for fans of decadent poetry. Ernest Dowson (1867 - 1900) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He is commonly associated with the 'Decadent movement', and best remembered for such vivid phrases as 'Days of Wine and Roses' and 'Gone with the Wind'. Many antiquarian texts such as this are becoming increasingly rare and expensive. With this in mind, we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition - complete with a specially commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473370371

Book preview

The Poems

of Ernest Dowson

by

Ernest Dowson

Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

This book is copyright and may not be

reproduced or copied in any way without

the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Contents

The Poems of Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

ERNEST DOWSON

I

II

III

IN PREFACE: FOR ADELAIDE

VERSES

A CORONAL

NUNS OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION

VILLANELLE OF SUNSET

MY LADY APRIL

TO ONE IN BEDLAM

AD DOMNULAM SUAM

AMOR UMBRATILIS

AMOR PROFANUS

VILLANELLE OF MARGUERITE’S

YVONNE OF BRITTANY

YVONNE OF BRITTANY

BENEDICTIO DOMINI

GROWTH

AD MANUS PUELLAE

FLOS LUNAE

NON SUM QUALIS ERAM BONAE SUB REGNO CYNARAE

VANITAS

EXILE

SPLEEN

O MORS! QUAM AMARA EST MEMORIA TUA HOMINI PACEM HABENTI IN SUBSTANTIIS SUIS

APRIL LOVE

VAIN HOPE

VAIN RESOLVES

A REQUIEM

BEATA SOLITUDO

TERRE PROMISE

AUTUMNAL

IN TEMPORE SENECTUTIS

VILLANELLE OF HIS LADY’S TREASURES

GRAY NIGHTS

VESPERAL

THE GARDEN OF SHADOW

SOLI CANTARE PERITI ARCADES

ON THE BIRTH OF A FRIEND’S CHILD

EXTREME UNCTION

AMANTIUM IRAE

IMPENITENT ULTIMA

A VALEDICTION

SAPIENTIA LUNAE

SERAPHITA

EPIGRAM

QUID NON SUPREMUS, AMANTES?

CHANSON SANS PAROLES

THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE

THE MOON MAIDEN’S SONG

DECORATIONS

BEYOND

DE AMORE

THE DEAD CHILD

CARTHUSIANS

THE THREE WITCHES

VILLANELLE OF THE POET’S ROAD

VILLANELLE OF ACHERON

SAINT GERMAIN-EN-LAYE

AFTER PAUL VERLAINE

COLLOQUE SENTIMENTAL

SPLEEN

TO HIS MISTRESS

JADIS

IN A BRETON CEMETERY

TO WILLIAM THEODORE PETERS ON HIS RENAISSANCE CLOAK

THE SEA-CHANGE

DREGS

A SONG

BRETON AFTERNOON

VENITE DESCENDAMUS

TRANSITION

EXCHANGES

TO A LADY ASKING FOOLISH QUESTIONS

RONDEAU

MORITURA

LIBERA ME

TO A LOST LOVE

WISDOM

IN SPRING

A LAST WORD

Ernest Dowson

Ernest Christopher Dowson was an English poet, novelist and short-story writer, most associated with the ‘Decadent Movement’; a literary style giving precedence to artifice and symbolism. Dowson was born in Lee, London, England, on 2nd August 1867. He spent his early education at local schools before attending Queen’s College, Oxford. Dowson left in March 1888 however, before obtaining his degree.

In November of 1888, the young man started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, East London, which had been established by the poet’s grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls and taking the performers to dinner. He also worked assiduously at his writing during this time. Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic. He had more success later in his career as a translator of French fiction, working on novels by Balzac and the Goncourt brothers, and Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos.

In 1889, aged twenty-three, Dowson fell in love with the eleven-year-old Adelaide ‘Missie’ Foltinowicz, daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. In 1893 he unsuccessfully proposed to her. His biographer in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography writes cautiously that ‘Through [Dowson’s] letters and poetry there runs a strong current of paedophilia, which has an erotic strain; but it is tempered by a humane and romantic appreciation of the freshness and generosity of children not yet tainted by the manners of society.’ Even for the standards of the early 1890s however, eleven years old was still considered extremely young. Adelaide eventually married a tailor, to Dowson’s despair.

In August 1894 Dowson’s father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February 1895, and soon Dowson began to decline rapidly. The publisher Leonard Smithers gave him an allowance to live in France and write translations, but he returned to London in 1897 (where he stayed with the Foltinowicz family, despite the transfer of Adelaide’s affections). In 1899, Robert Sherard (a fellow writer and journalist) found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to his cottage in Catford, where Sherard was living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard’s cottage and died there of alcoholism at the age of thirty-two.

The young poet had become a Catholic in 1892 and was interred in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries. After Dowson’s death, Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘Poor wounded wonderful fellow that he was, a tragic reproduction of all tragic poetry, like a symbol, or a scene. I hope bay leaves will be laid on his tomb and rue and myrtle too for he knew what love was.’ Dowson died on 23rd February 1900. Today, he is best known for his beautiful lyric verse and short fictional novels.

THE POEMS

OF

ERNEST DOWSON

with a memoir

by

ARTHUR SYMONS

The poems in this volume were published at varying intervals from his Oxford days at Queens College to the time of his death.

ERNEST DOWSON

I

The death of Ernest Dowson will mean very little to the world at large, but it will mean a great deal to the few people who care passionately for poetry. A little book of verses, the manuscript of another, a one-act play in verse, a few short stories, two novels written in collaboration, some translations from the French, done for money; that is all that was left by a man who was undoubtedly a man of genius, not a great poet, but a poet, one of the very few writers of our generation to whom that name can be applied in its most intimate sense. People will complain, probably, in his verses, of what will seem to them the factitious melancholy, the factitious idealism, and (peeping through at a few rare moments) the factitious suggestions of riot. They will see only a literary affectation, where in truth there is as genuine a note of personal sincerity as in the more explicit and arranged confessions of less admirable poets. Yes, in these few evasive, immaterial snatches of song, I find, implied for the most part, hidden away like a secret, all the fever and turmoil and the unattained dreams of a life which had itself so much of the swift, disastrous, and suicidal impetus of