The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson

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Title: The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson
Author: Ernest Dowson et al
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8497]?[This file was first posted on July 16, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE POEMS AND PROSE OF ERNEST DOWSON ***
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THE POEMS AND PROSE
OF
ERNEST DOWSON
with a MEMOIR by ARTHUR SYMONS
CONTENTS
MEMOIR. By Arthur Symons
POEMS
IN PREFACE: FOR ADELAIDE
A CORONAL
VERSES:
Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration?Villanelle of Sunset?My Lady April?To One in Bedlam?Ad Domnulam Suam?Amor Umbratilis?Amor Profanus?Villanelle of Marguerites?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?"You would have understood me, had you waited"?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?Impenitentia Ultima?A Valediction?Sapientia Lunae?"Cease smiling, Dear! a little while be sad"?Seraphita?Epigram?Quid non speremus, Amantes??Chanson sans Paroles
THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE
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-I?After Paul Verlaine-II?After Paul Verlaine-III?After Paul Verlaine-IV?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
PROSE
THE DIARY OF A SUCCESSFUL MAN?A CASE OF CONSCIENCE?AN ORCHESTRAL VIOLIN?SOUVENIRS OF AN EGOIST?THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS
ERNEST DOWSON was born in 1867 at Lea, in Kent, England. Most of his life was spent in France. He died February 21, 1900.
The poems in this volume were published at varying intervals from his Oxford days at Queens College to the time of his death. The prose works here included were published in 1886, 1890, 1892 and in 1893.
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 genius.
Ernest Christopher Dowson was born at The Grove, Belmont Hill, Lee, Kent, on August 2nd, 1867; he died at 26 Sandhurst Gardens, Catford, S.E., on Friday morning, February 23, 1900, and was buried in the Roman Catholic part of the Lewisham Cemetery on February 27. His great-uncle was Alfred Domett, Browning's "Waring," at one time Prime Minister of New Zealand, and author of "Ranolf and Amohia," and other poems. His father, who had himself a taste for literature, lived a good deal in France and on the Riviera, on account of the delicacy of his health, and Ernest had a somewhat irregular education, chiefly out of England, before he entered Queen's College, Oxford. He left in 1887 without taking a degree, and came to London, where he lived for several years, often revisiting France, which was always his favourite country. Latterly, until the last year of his life, he lived