Tuesday Poem: Cynara, by Ernest Christopher Dowson

Non sum qualis eram bonæ sub Regno Cynaræ

['The days when Cynara was queen will not return for me.' - CATULLUS]


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,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone, 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.

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;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

Credit note: First published in 1896.

Tim says: Ernest Dowson is a minor and largely forgotten poet, yet he gave the English language the phrases "gone with the wind" (third stanza above), "days of wine and roses" (from "Vitae Summa Brevis"), and, on a more prosaic level, is the first recorded user of the word "soccer".

Dowson's poetry is an example of the doomed, late-Victorian romanticism and decadence most closely associated with the more famous Algernon Swinburne. The excellent Horizon Review has recently published an article by Katy Evans-Bush about Dowson and his place in the transition from Victorian sentimentalism to modernism.

But away, dull care! Begone, literary history! I like this poem for its over-the-topness, for its self-pity, and for that silly, and yet marvellously musical, line:

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng...