Ernest Dowson

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Ernest Dowson lived in London, worked at his parents’ dry-docking business, and was a member of the Rhymers’ Club with W.B. Yeats and Arthur Symons. Dowson’s poems trace the sorrow of unrequited love and are the source of the phrases “gone with the wind” and “days of wine and roses.” He also supplied the earliest written mention in English of soccer. Both of Dowson’s parents committed suicide, and Dowson, who rarely had a fixed home, died at the age of 32. Source

Excerpt from "They are not long"

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. 

Published:

1896

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Romanticism

Anthology Years:

2022

Themes:

Death & Loss

Faith & Hope

Literary Devices:

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

End Rhyme

when a poem has lines ending with words that sound the same

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic

Polysyndeton

the repetition of conjunctions frequently and in close proximity in a sentence

Quatrain

A stanza made of four lines.