I Have Been Faithful to Thee. . . in my fashion.. Two LOST POEMS

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Stolen Kiss

Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1787-1789

(The Hermitage, St. Petersburg)

I used to spend hours at a time as a girl in my bed luxuriating in poetry books like a long lazy boat ride, especially when I was sick, woozily lost in a world I have missed for a long time.


I never knew whether the poet I was reading was famous or "lost" or altogether terrible, so I formed my own mind and favorites.


It turns out my natural taste was pretty true to canon. Two I am thinking of now, however, are genuinely "lost," or at least two of their poems are; once beloved and now virtually unknown.


And yet, one of them coined two spectacularly famous phrases that all of us still know- and use! I guarantee that at some time, you have used them both.

 chaste obsession, the Muse
Photo by Joanna Thomas, flckr

The young Ernest Dowson- who was to remain forever young (1867-1900)- was a Decadence movement poet who hobnobbed with the likes of Yeats, and presumably addressed his poetry to an 11-year-old waitress at the restaurant he frequented. 


Oscar Wilde's biographer discovered him in a bar dying of absinthe, to which he was addicted, and took him home to mend but, age 32, Dowson never recovered.


Dowson has two phrases we've eternalized- and yet few know his name. His work is full of phrases begging to be eternalized. The poem he is known for (if at all), remains one of my favorites** that I find truly delightful (if decadence can be delightful)- and full of quotable phrases.

Dowson is a poet lost but not forgotten. His name is what's lost. This poem might appear on any list of lost poems. I discovered this terrific literary article that analyzes that poem.* Here we learn of Dowson's skill as a French translator of Verlaine- from whom he borrowed the 12-syllable French line called the Alexandrine, to powerful effect.

Here are Dowson's two phrases that I promise you, YOU HAVE USED:







(1)  From my favorite poem (below):

I have forgot much, Cynara! 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. . .

(2) and the other phrase which you know, in his poem Vitae Summa Brevis:

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. . .

Aha! Didn't that feel like reading Shakespeare, and words just jump right out at you.


Here's another unlucky poet who wrote about kisses. Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) was a Romantic poet who hobnobbed with the likes of Bryon, Shelley and Thomas Carlysle- we certainly do know THEIR names. . . and THEIR poems. . . He was so popular that when imprisoned for two years (for printing ridicule of the Prince Regent), he was allowed visitors (among other things), and his prison cell became what amounted to a literary salon.


His unlucky life was full of debt, ill health and an unhappy marriage. And what is worse, both now- and in his own time- he is not considered all that good- not even by his own friends. He's been forgotten, and perhaps with good reason. So I do not consider him a "lost" poet at all.


But he has a LOST POEM that should be better known than it is, at least a part of it. From it comes one of my favorite phrases, which should be on everyone's tongue. (Or rather, a LOST VERSE; I wisely omitted the other two verses.)


Poem by Leigh Hunt:
from:

Song of Fairies Robbing an Orchard

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,

Stolen kisses much completer,

Stolen looks are nice in chapels,

Stolen, stolen, be your apples.

Wasn't that grand?!

Poem by ERNEST DOWSON,

* Please refer to this excellent article about the poem

** Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae

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.

Absinthe

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 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.