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]
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE POEMS

AND PROSE OF ERNEST DOWSON ***
E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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