Quote#Love
You ask my love completest
Quote byErnest Dowson · 1867–1900
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Decorations (1899), "To His Mistress", line 17; p. 141.
English (original)
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! No love at all were better, Than love which is not free.
— Ernest Dowson
More from Ernest Dowson
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:
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 …
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.
I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.
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.