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    The Poems of Ernest Dowson
    The Poems of Ernest Dowson
    The Poems of Ernest Dowson
    Ebook149 pages55 minutes

    The Poems of Ernest Dowson

    By Ernest Dowson

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    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateFeb 17, 2015
    ISBN9781473370371
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      Book preview

      The Poems of Ernest Dowson - Ernest Dowson

      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

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