lyrical poetry - OUDL Home

LYRICALPOETRYdays of wine and roses." The love is not very passionate.If Dowson catches at times the tone of PaulVerlaine's more wistful songs, as "C'est Pextaselangoureuse" inCome hither, child, and rest:This is the end of day,Behold the weary west,and if, like Verlaine, he has moments of sagesse andwrites the Nuns of the Perpetual Adoration:Calm, sad, secure ; behind high convent walls,These watch the sacred lamp, these watch and pray :And it is one with them when evening falls,And one with them the cold return of day,he had, on the other hand, not the courage or else notthe strength to sing the passion from which these arethe reactions as Verlaine can do in a poem like Marco:Quand Marco dansait sa jupe moireeAllait et venait comme une maree.No; Dowson's finest poem is the subtly cadenced expressionof his absorbing self-pity:Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mineThere fell thy shadow, Cynara ! thy breath was shedUpon my soul between the kisses and the wine ;And I was desolate and sick of an old passion ;Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head :I have been faithful to thee, Cynara ! in my fashion,a fashion on which one can make pleasing verses atany rate.A Catholic poet, and several of these poets wereCatholics, can always, in this country, be sure of agood claque, which is far better than that they shouldsuffer from undue neglect, such as is often the fate of144