Ernest Dowson’s last text: The Princess of Dreams

Hanna Pauli - The Princess
Hanna Pauli – The Princess – National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, from Tutt’Art

Ernest Dowson’s collection of poems Decorations: in Verse and Prose, published in 1899, ends with 5 poems in prose. The first is The Fortunate Islands. Then three of them are included in a selection by The New Formalist: Markets (after an old Nursery Rhyme), Absinthia Taetra and The Visit; note that in the latter, the sentence “I have wanted you all my life” has been changed into “I have waited for you all my life.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…

Penelope, by Francis Thompson

John Singer Sargent - The Honourable Victoria Stanley
John Singer Sargent – The Honourable Victoria Stanley

Volume 2 of The works of Francis Thompson, Poems contains a section titled A Narrow Vessel, starting with the following description:

Being a little dramatic sequence on the aspect of primitive girl-nature towards a love beyond its capacities

It consists mostly of poems about unhappy love affairs with girls; they are often bitter and reproachful, sometimes telling of “sin.” CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…