Ernest Dowson

O pray the earth enfold Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.

The fairest face of all is the face I have not seen.

Ah, God, that sweet things should decline, And fires fade out which were not cold, Erewhile.

You ask my love completest, As strong next year as now, The devil take you, sweetest, Ere I make aught such vow. Life is a masque that changes, A fig for constancy!

When this, our rose, is faded, And these, our days, are done, In lands profoundly shaded From tempest and from sun: Ah, once more come together, Shall we forgive the past,

I was not sorrowful, but only tired Of everything that ever I desired.

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.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng.

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

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.

Ah, Lalage! while life is ours, Hoard not thy beauty rose and white, But pluck the pretty, fleeting flowers That deck our little path of light: For all too soon we twain shall tread The bitter pastures of the dead:

Say, doth she weep for very wantonness? Or is it that she dimly doth foresee Across her youth the joys grow less and less, The burden of the days that are to be: Autumn and withered leaves and vanity And winter bringing end in barrenness.

Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild, But there, beside the altar, there, is rest.

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 …

I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.