Ernest Dowson

"I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder."

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after 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 Within a dream."

"Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild, But there, beside the altar, there, is rest."

"Say, doth she weep for very wantonness? Or is it that she dimly doth foresee Across her youth the joys grow less and less, The burden of the days that are to be: Autumn and withered leaves and vanity And winter bringing end in barrenness."

"Better than mortal flowers, Thy moon-kissed roses seem."

"Ah, Lalage! while life is ours, Hoard not thy beauty rose and white, But pluck the pretty, fleeting flowers That deck our little path of light: For all too soon we twain shall tread The bitter pastures of the dead: Estranged, sad spectres of the night."

"Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion."

"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

"I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng."

"I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine."

"I was not sorrowful, but only tired Of everything that ever I desired."

"When this, our rose, is faded, And these, our days, are done, In lands profoundly shaded From tempest and from sun: Ah, once more come together, Shall we forgive the past, And safe from worldly weather Possess our souls at last?"

"You ask my love completest, As strong next year as now, The devil take you, sweetest, Ere I make aught such vow. Life is a masque that changes, A fig for constancy! No love at all were better, Than love which is not free."

"Ah, God, that sweet things should decline, And fires fade out which were not cold,  Erewhile."

"The fairest face of all is the face I have not seen."

"O pray the earth enfold Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust."

"Dowson and Johnson most I praise— To troop with those the world's forgot, And copy their proud steady gaze."

"Dowson seemed gentle, affectionate, drifting. His poetry shows how sincerely he felt the fascination of religion, but his religion had certainly no dogmatic outline, being but a desire for a condition of virginal ecstasy. If it is true, as Arthur Symons, his very close friend, has written, that he loved the restaurant-keeper's daughter for her youth, one may be almost certain that he sought from religion some similar quality, something of that which the angels find who move perpetually, as Swedenborg has said, towards "the dayspring of their youth.""