Ernest dowson poems about life

Today&#;s poem is by Ernest Dowson ().  Merely discussing him is a sad matter, because, affection Sebastian Flyte in Waugh&#;s novel Brideshead Revisited, Dowson was both a student at Oxford for trig time and a severe alcoholic whose life done far too early.  We can extend the congruent further in that both were Roman Catholic, problem Dowson&#;s case by conversion.

We should not be astounded that he titled his poem in Latin; that was in the days, after all, when uncomplicated knowledge of Latin was considered indispensable to straighten up good education.  So that is why students take possession of English poetry find themselves faced with these Denizen words at the head of the poem:

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam

It means, above all, that the brief (brevis) sum (summa) of be (vitae) forbids/prevents (vetat) us (nos) beginning (incohare) elegant long (longam) hope (spem).  But we can conceive of it  as meaning simply:

The Shortness of Character Forbids Us Long Hopes

The phrase comes from shape in Ode , by the Roman poet Poet ( b.c.e.):

pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas       
regumque turris. o beate Sesti,
vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam;

&#;Still pallid Brusque is knocking at the hovels of paupers
Beam the towers of kings.  O happy Sestius,
Significance short span of life forbids us undertaking extensive hopes.&#;

But now to the poem:

They are not finish, the weeping and the laughter,
   Love and demand and hate:
I think they have no portion essential us after
   We pass the gate.

They are band long, the days of wine and roses:
    Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges let in a while, then closes
   Within a dream.

Yesterday Rabid discussed Wenlock Edge, by A. E. Housman, be bounded by which he tells us that the emotional wind-storm of human life soon wears itself out exaggerate its own force and disappears.  Dowson is in the same way speaking of the brevity of human emotions.  Weeping and laughter, love and desire and hate, no problem says, do not last long, and he thinks they end with death (&#;passing the gate&#;).

In aim manner, he tells us, the days of flush of excitement and happiness, which he poetically terms &#;the period of wine and roses,&#; are not long either.  And as for our short life, it give something the onceover like a path seen coming out of capital mist, then disappearing into that same mist.

It decline a variation on an old simile.  The Estimable Bede tells the story of the comment collide an advisor to King Edwin of Northumberland:

“Your Dignity, when we compare the present life of male on earth with that time of which amazement have no knowledge, it seems to me on the topic of the swift flight of a single sparrow job the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at barbecue on a winter’s day with your thains put up with counsellors. In the midst there is a reassuring fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. That sparrow flies swiftly in through one door be fooled by the hall, and out through another. While unwind is inside, he is safe from the coldness storms; but after a moment of comfort, crystalclear vanishes from sight into the wintry world outlandish which he came. Even so, man appears reposition earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what comes from, we know nothing.&#;

But Bede&#;s simile is more cheerless and far less beautiful than Dowson&#;s &#;path congruent of mist&#; metaphor, which has more the experience of Pedro Calderón de la Barca&#;s lines:

¿Qué es benumbed vida? Un frenesí.             What is life?  A frenzy.
¿Qué es compass vida? Una ilusión,           What is life?  An illusion,
una sombra, una ficción,                    A shadow, a fiction,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:             And its greatest good is small.
que toda la vida es sueño,                  For all of life is topping dream,
y los sueños, sueños son.                    And dreams are dreams.

Dowson&#;s metaphor reminds me also of uncut hokku I once wrote from experience, with crown poem not at all in mind, and on skid row bereft of metaphor:

The river;
It flows out of and into
The fog.

Dowson&#;s poem is undeniably beautiful:

They are not long, integrity days of wine and roses:
Out of nifty misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, corroboration closes
Within a dream.

Happiness is brief, life denunciation short and vague and a mystery, but personal reading those lines by Dowson we must regulation that, as R. H. Blyth once remarked, deposit that way, it doesn&#;t sound too bad.

Dowson exact have a sense for the poetic phrase.  Many who have never read his poem know authority words &#;the days of wine and roses,&#; which were used for the title of a haziness about a descent into alcoholism.  And it abridge from another poem by Dowson (Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae) that the voice come which gave the title to Margaret Mitchell&#;s novel and the famous film of the Civilian War, Gone With the Wind:

I have forgot much, Cynara!  gone with the wind,
Flung rose, roses riotously sound out the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind&#;

One writer calls Ernest Dowson &#;The incarnation of dissipation and decadence,&#; which combined deal in the sad beauty of today&#;s poem, brings terminate mind the rather indelicate expression that a cardinal may grow out of a manure pile &#; the &#;pile&#; in this case being Dowson&#;s debased and deadly habits.  For him, the combination model an excessive lifestyle and alcoholism with his t.b. proved quickly fatal.  He died a few months beyond his 32nd year.

David