Works
Dowson is best remembered for some vivid phrases, such as "days of wine and roses" from his poem "Vitae Summa Brevis" (1896), which appears in the stanza:
- They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
- Out of a misty dream
- Our path emerges for a while, then closes
- Within a dream.
and "gone with the wind", from Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae, the third stanza of which reads:
- I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
- Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
- Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
- But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
- Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
- I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
This poem was first published in The Second Book of the Rhymer's Club in 1894 and was noticed by Richard le Gallienne in his Wanderings in Bookland column in The Idler, volume 9, p. 889.
The last line of this stanza, which is the last line of all four stanzas of the poem, was the inspiration for the song title "Always True to You in My Fashion" from Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter.
Margaret Mitchell, touched by the "far away, faintly sad sound I wanted" of the third stanza's first line, chose that line as the title of her only novel: Gone with the Wind.
Dowson also provides the earliest use of the word soccer in written language according to the Oxford English Dictionary (although he spells it socca, presumably because it did not yet have a standard written form).
His prose works include the short stories collected as Dilemmas (1895), and the two novels A Comedy of Masks and Adrian Rome (each co-written with Arthur Moore). Some of his short prose was first published in the journal The Yellow Book.
Read more about this topic: Ernest Dowson
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“His character as one of the fathers of the English language would alone make his works important, even those which have little poetical merit. He was as simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered to Italy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“My plan of instruction is extremely simple and limited. They learn, on week-days, such coarse works as may fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the poor. My object is not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in habits of industry and piety.”
—Hannah More (1745–1833)
“The discovery of Pennsylvania’s coal and iron was the deathblow to Allaire. The works were moved to Pennsylvania so hurriedly that for years pianos and the larger pieces of furniture stood in the deserted houses.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)