Poem Read by Louisa Durrells of Corfu
Today's poem is by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900). Merely discussing him is a distressing matter, because, like Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited, Dowson was both a pupil at Oxford for a time and a severe alcoholic whose life ended far too early. We can extend the parallel further in that both were Roman Catholic, in Dowson's case by conversion.
We should not be surprised that he titled his poem in Latin; this was in the days, after all, when a knowledge of Latin was considered indispensable to a good educational activity. And so that is why students of English poetry observe themselves faced with these Latin words at the head of the poem:
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
It ways, essentially, that the cursory (brevis) sum (summa) of life (vitae) forbids/prevents (vetat) us (nos) start (incohare) a long (longam) hope (spem). But nosotros can think of it as pregnant simply:
The Shortness of Life Forbids Usa Long Hopes
The phrase comes from lines in Ode ane.4, by the Roman poet Horace (65-viii b.c.e.):
pallida Mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
regnumque turris. o beate Sesti,
vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam;
"Nonetheless pallid Death is knocking at the hovels of paupers
And the towers of kings. O happy Sestius,
The brusque span of life forbids us undertaking long hopes."
But at present to the poem:
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I remember they have no portion in us afterward
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Inside a dream.
Yesterday I discussed Wenlock Edge, by A. E. Housman, in which he tells us that the emotional gale of human life soon wears itself out from its ain force and disappears. Dowson is similarly speaking of the brevity of human emotions. Weeping and laughter, beloved and desire and hate, he says, practice not terminal long, and he thinks they terminate with death ("passing the gate").
In like style, he tells the states, the days of pleasance and happiness, which he poetically terms "the days of wine and roses," are not long either. And as for our short life, it is like a path seen coming out of a mist, then disappearing into that same mist.
It is a variation on an old simile. The Venerable Bede tells the story of the comment of an advisor to Male monarch Edwin of Northumberland:
"Your Majesty, when we compare the nowadays life of man on globe with that time of which we have no knowledge, information technology seems to me like the swift flight of a unmarried sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you lot are sitting at dinner on a winter's 24-hour interval with your thains and counsellors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; exterior the storms of wintertime pelting or snowfall are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safety from the wintertime storms; but later a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Nonetheless, man appears on world for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing."
Merely Bede's simile is more bleak and far less cute than Dowson's "path out of mist" metaphor, which has more the flavor of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's lines:
¿Qué es la vida? United nations frenesí. What is life? A frenzy.
¿Qué es la 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 a dream,
y los sueños, sueños son. And dreams are dreams.
Dowson'south metaphor reminds me also of a hokku I once wrote from feel, with his poem not at all in heed, and without metaphor:
The river;
It flows out of and into
The fog.
Dowson'southward verse form is undeniably beautiful:
They are non long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, and so closes
Within a dream.
Happiness is cursory, life is short and vague and a mystery, but in reading those lines by Dowson we must say that, every bit R. H. Blyth once remarked, put that style, it doesn't sound as well bad.
Dowson did have a sense for the poetic phrase. Many who have never read his poem know the words "the days of wine and roses," which were used for the championship of a motion-picture show virtually a descent into alcoholism. And it is from another poem past Dowson (Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae) that the words come which gave the championship to Margaret Mitchell'due south novel and the famous pic of the Civil War,Gone With the Air current:
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the air current,
Flung rose, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind…
One author calls Ernest Dowson "The incarnation of dissipation and decadence," which combined with the lamentable beauty of today's poem, brings to heed the rather indelicate expression that a rose may abound out of a manure pile — the "pile" in this instance being Dowson'due south corrupt and mortiferous habits. For him, the combination of an excessive lifestyle and alcoholism with his tuberculosis proved speedily fatal. He died a few months beyond his 32nd year.
David
whitesidepilthand.blogspot.com
Source: https://hokku.wordpress.com/2013/02/05/they-are-not-long-the-days-of-wine-and-roses-the-brief-life-of-ernest-dowson/
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