Delivering Newspapers - Bei Dao

Who believes in the mask’s weeping?
who believes in the weeping nation?
the nation has lost its memory
memory goes as far as this morning

the newspaper boy sets out in the morning
all over town the sound of a desolate trumpet
is it your bad omen or mine?
vegetables with fragile nerves
peasants plant their hands in the ground
longing for the gold of a good harvest
politicians sprinkle pepper
on their own tongues
and a stand of birches in the midst of a debate:
whether to sacrifice themselves for art or doors

this public morning
created by a paperboy
revolution sweeps past the corner
he’s fast asleep


Bei Dao

June - Bei Dao

Wind at the ear says June
June a blacklist I slipped
in time

note this way to say goodbye
the sighs within these words

note these annotations:
unending plastic flowers
on the dead left bank
the cement square extending
from writing to

now
I run from writing
as dawn is hammered out
a flag covers the sea

and loudspeakers loyal to the sea’s
deep bass say June


Bei Dao

Ramallah - Bei Dao

in Ramallah
the ancients play chess in the starry sky
the endgame flickers
a bird locked in a clock
jumps out to tell the time

in Ramallah
the sun climbs over the wall like an old man
and goes through the market
throwing mirror light on
a rusted copper plate

in Ramallah
gods drink water from earthen jars
a bow asks a string for directions
a boy sets out to inherit the ocean
from the edge of the sky

in Ramallah
seeds sown along the high noon
death blossoms outside my window
resisting, the tree takes on a hurricane's
violent original shape

Bei Dao

Parking Lot - Stephen Sandy

Hard to believe the racket geese make, squabbling,
holding a confab in the dark--pitch dark to him
padding back to check the lights; yes, the windows
are dark.
But that honking down on the pond, like angry
taxis, stops him: late geese on their way--he thinks--
homeward. But geese are home, wherever. A continent.
Are acting without accomplices; no past
or future to know. That squawky banter is
an irremediable thing.
He makes for his car, the office
shut down. Now someone passes him. They know each other--
each speaks with mild surprise the other's name,
no more. And heads his separate way across the dark.


Stephen Sandy

Circular Drives - Stephen Sandy

When I was a kid taken to the best end of the lake,
the raked gravel of someone's circular drive
—always rustling evenly under the tires

with a hushed crunch—served notice, served privilege;
distant, esteemed. Maybe an Ordway's place,
or the leaf-free drive and lawns of Southways,

long and green in shade near private waters
where a dog or two dozed on a dock, where my father
inched the car forward to make his delivery

as the low drum roll of pebbles decorously jostling
beneath us was heard behind the great
front door by someone waiting, or on guard.


Stephen Sandy

Candles - Stephen Sandy

When the war came that year it was the fashion to place
a light in the window then lights went on each night to give

some shape to a dark that rose from the streets a flood swelling
with fear while they waited for reliable news from the front.

A candle or electric holiday light that looked like a candle
showed you supported the troops showed you were on board

perhaps even a parent of one out there and you
honored their loved ones of course and were opposed to war

and prayed this one would soon be over. In the event
few fell if thousands of enemy perished slowly triumph

broke out over the city soon candles winked out as when
a parade has passed and the music fades—though in one window

a light burned on long after the war was history. What
did it mean who lit it each night that far watch fire burning.


Stephen Sandy

A Requiem - Ernest Christopher Dowson

Neobule, being tired,
Far too tired to laugh or weep,
From the hours, rosy and gray,
Hid her golden face away.
Neobule, fain of sleep,
Slept at last as she desired!

Neobule! is it well,
That you haunt the hollow lands,
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Plucking, with their spectral hands,
Scentless blooms of asphodel?

Neobule, tired to death
Of the flowers that I threw
On her flower-like, fair feet,
Sighed for blossoms not so sweet,
Lunar roses pale and blue,
Lilies of the world beneath.

Neobule! ah, too tired
Of the dreams and days above!
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Out of life and out of love,
Sleeps the sleep which she desired.



Ernest Christopher Dowson

A Last Word - Ernest Christopher Dowson

Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band.

Let us go hence, somewhither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labour, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.


Ernest Christopher Dowson

A Coronal - Ernest Christopher Dowson

WITH HIS SONGS AND HER DAYS TO HIS LADY AND TO LOVE

Violets and leaves of vine,
Into a frail, fair wreath
We gather and entwine:
A wreath for Love to wear,
Fragrant as his own breath,
To crown his brow divine,
All day till night is near.
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.

Violets and leaves of vine
For Love that lives a day,
We gather and entwine.
All day till Love is dead,
Till eve falls, cold and gray,
These blossoms, yours and mine,
Love wears upon his head,
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.

Violets and leaves of vine,
For Love when poor Love dies
We gather and entwine.
This wreath that lives a day
Over his pale, cold eyes,
Kissed shut by Proserpine,
At set of sun we lay:
Violets and leaves of vine
We gather and entwine.


Ernest Christopher Dowson

Chinise Poet Bei Dao 1949

Bei Dao (simplified Chinese: 北岛; traditional Chinese: 北島; pinyin: Běi Dǎo; literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai (趙振開). He was born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker, from 1969 to 1980. Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian (Today); the central publication of the Misty Poets which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China. (Three other leading Misty Poets, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were also exiled). His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.

Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English along with the collection of stories Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red azalea: Chinese poetry since the Cultural Revolution (1990) and Out of the howling storm: the new Chinese poetry. Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is currently Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Works

Poetry collections

• The August Sleepwalker Trans. Bonnie S. McDougall (New Directions, 1990)
• Old Snow Trans. Bonnie S. McDougall & Chen Maiping (New Directions, 1991)
• Forms of Distance. Trans. David Hinton (New Directions, 1994)
• Landscape Over Zero. Trans. David Hinton & Yanbing Chen (1996)
• Unlock. Translators Eliot Weinberger & Iona Man-Cheong. New Directions. 2000. At the Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996. (New Directions, 2001)
• Eliot Weinberger, ed (2010). The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems. New Directions.

Short story collections

• Waves. Translators Bonnie S. McDougall & Susette Ternent Cooke. New Directions Publishing. 1990.

Essay collections

Christopher Mattison, ed (2005). Midnight's gate. Translator Matthew Fryslie. New Directions Publishing.

UK Poet Stephen Sandy 1934

"The record: I was born in Minneapolis at Abbott Hospital near Loring Park on August 2, 1934....After a brief stint on active duty in the navy, I entered Yale College in the fall of 1951. I joined the NROTC; I left it by transferring to the AFROTC; I had grown passionate about my education and soon dropped AFROTC as well.

"I graduated with a B.A. in English in June 1955 and was drafted by the army on September 12, 1955....

"I studied German at Harvard Summer School and in September 1957 entered the Harvard Graduate School in English, earning an M.A. in 1959 and a Ph.D. in 1963. While a graduate student, I attended Robert Lowell's poetry workshop at Boston University; later I worked with Archibald MacLeish....In 1963 I joined the faculty as a full-time instructor in English. In 1967 I went to Japan as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Tokyo and returned a year later to a position on the English faculty of Brown University. Before going to Tokyo I had met Virginia Scoville in Cambridge. In 1969 we were married and we moved to Bennington, Vermont, where I would teach at Bennington College. A daughter, Clare, was born in 1976 when we lived in White Creek, New York, and a son, Nathaniel, in 1980.

"The days of learning as a pupil became days of learning as a teacher. It was my privilege to be part of that clan: colleague and thus—at Bennington—friend of many.

"In a long perspective, the situation does not matter, the telos only does, and that is the enduring trade. Think of a man in his study, surrounded by books, looking at them—like a cat with unfocused stare crouched under a peony bush—wondering whatever had they meant to him, things he once read, loved ones, loved things and days, and what he had been about. At the bottom of the garden of years, what is time? What matters but a few facts and loved ones held; or a mind, on the long frayed track of memory, running in the dark?"

Books

• Weathers Permitting, Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State Univ. Press, April, 2005.
• Surface Impressions. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 2002.
• Black Box. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. (Cloth & Paper)
• The Thread, New and Selected Poems. Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. (Cloth & Paper)
• Thanksgiving Over the Water. New York: Alfred A.Knopf, l992; paper, 1994
• Man in the Open Air. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, l988
• Riding to Greylock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, l983
• The Raveling of the Novel, Studies in Romantic Fiction from Walpole to Scott. New York: Arno Press, l980
• Roofs. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., l97l
• Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., l967

Chapbooks

• Marrow Spoon. North Bennington: Garlic Mouth Press, 1997.
• Vale of Academe, A Prose Poem for Bernard Malamud. Spartanburg: Holocene Press, 1996.
• The Epoch. North Bennington, Vt: Plinth Press, 1990.
• To A Mantis. North Hoosick, N.Y.: Plinth Press, 1987.
• Flight of Steps. Binghamton: Bellevue Press, 1982.
• End of the Picaro. Pawlet, Vt: Banyan Press, 1974.

Fellowships, Awards, Appointments, etc.

• Phi Beta Kappa Poet, Yale University, 2003
• Residency, Bellagio Study and Conference Center, Rockefeller Foundation, 2001
• Final Judge, The Hopwood Awards, University of Michigan, 1999
• Senior Fellow in Literature, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, 1998
• Wallace Stevens Award Jury, Academy of American Poets, 1998
• Howard Moss Residency for Poetry, Yaddo, 1998
• Reader’s Digest Residency for Distinguished Writers, Yaddo, 1997
• Chubb LifeAmerica Fellow, The MacDowell Colony, 1993
• U.S. Department of Education, Jacob J. Javits Fellows Program, Humanities Review panel, l99l; Arts Review panel, 1992, 1997
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, l988
• Vermont Council on the Arts Fellowship, l988
• Ingram Merrill Foundation Fellowship, l985
• NEA Poet in Residence, Y Poetry Center, Philadelphia, l985
• Councilor for English, Harvard Graduate Society for Advanced Study and Research, l969-74
• Phi Beta Kappa Poet, Brown University, l969
• Fulbright Visiting Lectureship, Japan, l967-68

Education

• Ph.D. Harvard University, l963
  M.A. Harvard University, l959
  B.A. Yale University, l955

Selected publications (poetry)

Atlantic Monthly, APR, Bad Henry Review, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Fence, Grand Street, Harpers, Kenyon Review. The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic, Michigan Quarterly Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Salamander, Salmagundi, Sonnet Scroll, Southwest Review, Southern Review, Southwest Review, TLS, Transatlantic Review, Western Humanities Review, The Yale Review, sixty other journals and reviews, here and abroad.

Work included in A Controversy of Poets (Anchor Books), A Burning Deck Anthology (Burning Deck), The New Yorker Book of Poems (Morrow), The New York Times Book of Verse (Macmillan), The Enduring Beast (Doubleday), Seasonal Performances (Michigan), Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS (Crown, l989; Persea Books, l992); The Best American Poetry 1995, ed. R. Howard & D. Lehman, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995; The Best American Poetry 1998, ed. Hollander & Lehman: New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998; and in anthologies such as A Good Man, Fathers and Sons in Poetry and Prose (Fawcett, 1993).

Selected publications (prose)

• “Salt of the Sky: James Merrill's Poetry,” Harvard Review, # 21 (Fall, 2001), pp 69-78.
• “Stephen Sandy,” Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Gale, 1998.
• “Auden at Bennington,” W. H. Auden Society Newsletter, Fall, 1997.
• "Keeping About: A Memory of Austin Warren," Tennessee Quarterly, Vol I, No. I. (Spring, 1994), pp 49-55.
• “A Low Profile” (fiction), Confrontation . 52-53 (Spring, 1994), pp 164-8.
• “Seeing Things: The Visionary Ardor of Seamus Heaney,” Salmagundi, No. 100, (Fall, 1993), pp 207-225.
• “Jibutsu-o-miru — Sheimas Hiini-no-Genshisha-teki-Netsui,” transl. of “Seeing Things: The Visionary Ardor of Seamus Heaney” into Japanese by Tokunaga Shozo, Gandaishi Techo, Tokyo, 1994.
• “Theodore Holmes,” Poetry Society of America Newsletter, PSA: Vol. 42 (Fall, 1993), pp 41-42.
• “‘Writing As A Career: An Early Auden Lecture in the States,” The W.H. Auden Society Newsletter, No. 10-11, New York, 1993.
• “Seamus Heaney,” Introduction to Dylan the Durable? On Dylan Thomas, by Seamus Heaney, Bennington Chapbooks in Literature, Bennington: Bennington College, 1992.
• "An Enlarging Pleasure," The Day I Was Older, on the Poetry of Donald Hall, ed. Rector, Story Line Press, Santa Cruz, l989.
• "Of 'Bronze'," Verse, Vol. 5, No 2, July l988.
• "James Merrill," Dictionary of Literary Biography, Yearbook l985. ed. Ross, Detroit: Gale Research, l986, pp 292-302.

(etc.)

Translations

• Horace, “Quis Multa Gracilis.” Norton Treasury of World Poetry. Norton: New York, 1998.
• Aeschylus, Seven Against Thebes, a verse translation of Aeschylus. Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998.
• Seneca, A Cloak for Hercules, a verse translation of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, “Hercules Oetaeus,”
• Seneca, The Tragedies, Vol II, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Music

• TIMEX: Poems of Stephen Sandy read by the poet. Music written and performed by Gokcen Ergene, Nadir Naqvi, Vuk Mitevski, and Nicole Pope. CD: Dishwasher Studio, 2001.
• Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom: The Choral Music of Richard Wilson. William Appling Singers and Orchestra, William Appling conducting. CD: Albany Records, #Troy 333, 1999.
• Heartbeats: New Songs from Minnesota for the AIDS Quilt Songbook. No. 10, “The Second Law.” Tony Holt, Baritone. John Jensen, Piano. CD: Innova, #500, 1997.
• The Second Law. Music by Richard Wilson. The Aids Quilt Songbook. New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1994
• Vita de Sancto Hieronymo: An Antiphonal Cantata. Music by Henry Brant. New York: MCA Music, 1973.

Notices of Sandy's work (poems)

• "Stephen Sandy," Shozo Tokunaga, The Rising Generation, (Vol. CXLVIII—No. 12) Tokyo, Japan: March 1, 2003, 748-749.
• "Surface Impressions, by Stephen Sandy," Peter Campion, Poetry (May, 2003),98 - 100.
• "On Stephen Sandy," Don Share, Salamander Vol. 7, No. 2 (Summer, 2001). pp 28-29.
• "The Thread, New and Selected Poems," David Yezzi, Poetry, Vol. CLXXIV (June 1999) pp 171-173.
• “Poetry in Review,” Phoebe Pettingell, The Yale Review, Vol. 80, No. 4 (October 1992), 111-113.
• “The Everyday and the Transcendent,” Richard Tillinghast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Vol XXXII, No 3 (Summer, 1993), pp 485- 487.
• “In the Divide: Skeptic Master, Stung Pilgrim,” Chard deNiord, The New England Review, Middlebury Series Vol 16 No 2 (Spring, 1994), pp 159-62.
• “The Pleasures of Craft, Honesty and Intelligence,” Margo Jefferson, The New York Times, Wednesday, Nov 16, 1994, p C23.
• "Ghazal for Geldzahler," Salamander. (Vol. 9, Nos. 1 & 2. Then & Now 10th Anniversary 2003/2004), 171.
• "Flea Market," Salamander. (Vol. 9, Nos. 1 & 2. Then & Now 10th Anniversary 2003/2004), 172.
• "Triptych," Salamander. (Vol. 9, Nos. 1 & 2. Then & Now 10th Anniversary 2003/2004), 172.
• "Home Reel," Green Mountains Review. Vol XVI, No. 2, Fall, 2003), 96.
• "Ohio In Italy, " Green Mountains Review. Vol XVI, No. 2, (Fall, 2003), 97
• "Natural History: The Barn," Pequod, an issue of long poems. Forthcoming, 2005
• "Shutters," Hunger Mountain. No. 4, Spring 2004, 200-202.
• "State Farm Insurance," Paris Review. No, 170 (Summer, 2004), 84-86.
• "Just in Time," TheSaint Ann's Review. Vol 5, No. 1.(Winter/Spring 2004), 48. "Russian Dolls," The Southern Review. (Fall, 2004).
• "Three Stones," Harvard Review, No. 28 (Spring, 2005).
  

Notices of Sandy's work (critical studies, reviews)

• "Like the Bones of Dreams," Heather Ross Miller, The American Scholar (Washington, D.C), Autumn, 1967.
• "Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom," David Roberts, The Denver Quarterly, Summer, 1967.
• "Four Poets," Barry Spacks, Poetry, Vol 112, April, 1968.
• "Stephen Sandy," Makoto Takashima, Shigaku, No. 4, Tokyo, 1969.
• "Roofs," Eric Horsting, Antioch Review, Vol XXXI, No. 4, Fall, 1971.
• "Roofs," Vernon Young, The Hudson Review (New York), Winter 1971-72.
• "Roofs: There is No Room For Free Fall," Barbara Lazear Ascher, Quadrille, Spring, 1972.
• "American Poets and Japan, Stephen Sandy," Shozo Tokunaga, Poetry Studies, Vol 10, No. 8, Tokyo, 1975.
• "American Poets and Japan, " Shozo Tokunaga, Kotoba no Soyogi: Gendai America Shi. [The Frisson Nouveau, Conbtemporary American Poetry], Tokyo: Chukyo-Shuppan, 1979. pp 326 - 334.
• "Black Box," Douglas K. Currier, Harvard Review No. 17 (Fall, 1999), pp xx-xx.
• "Sandy's 'Surface Impressions,' Richard Nunley, The Berkshire Eagle, Weds May 29, 2002, p A7.
• "Stephen Sandy," Shozo Tokunaga, The Rising Generation, (Vol. CXLVIII-No. 12) Tokyo, Japan: March 1, 2003, 748-749.
• "Surface Impressions, by Stephen Sandy," Peter Campion, Poetry (May, 2003), 98- 100.

Misc. notices

• "Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom," Harvard Alumni Bulletin, April, 1967.
• "Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom," Capital Times, May 18, 1967.
• "Several Poets Building to `Collected' Status," The Wall Street Journal, 13 June, 1967.
• "Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom," Ray Smith, Minneapolis Tribune, 18 June, 1967.
• "Poet of Wit and Loss," Barry Spacks, Boston Sunday Globe, 3 September, - 1967.
• "Beautiful Poems: A Rare Collection," John A, Wood, Richmond Times Dispatch, (Richmond, Va.), 3 October, 1971.
• "Roofs, " New Dominion Magazine, December, 1971.
• "Two Poets, Two Statements," Martin Robbins, Boston Sunday Globe, 23 January 1972.
• "A Poet, Stephen Sandy," Libby Bogel, Choragos, Mt Holyoke College, 9 March,
  1972.
• "Roofs," Richard Howard, American Poetry Review (Philadelphia), May-June, 1973.
• "Sandy Reads from his Work," Alison Zepp, Pipe Dream (Binghamton), 26 April, 1977.
• "The Difficulty," Dick Higgins, Margins (Milwaukee), pp. 24-26, 1975.
• "Riding to Greylock," Kate Lewis, The Harvard Advocate (Cambridge), June 1983.
• "Three Poets," Bruce Bennett, The New York Times Book Review , July 17,1983, pp 10, 16.
• "Notes on Current Books," The Virginia Quarterly Review, Vol. 59, No 3 (Summer, 1983), p 99.

UK Poet Ernest Dowson 1867 - 1900

Ernest Christopher Dowson (2 August 1867 – 23 February 1900), born in Lee, London, was an English poet, novelist and writer of short stories, associated with the Decadent movement.

Dowson attended The Queen's College, Oxford, but left before obtaining a degree.^[1] In November 1888, he started work with his father at Dowson and Son, a dry-docking business in Limehouse, east London, established by the poet's grandfather. He led an active social life, carousing with medical students and law pupils, going to music halls, and taking the performers to dinner. Meanwhile, he was also working assiduously at his writing. He was a member of the Rhymers' Club, which included W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. He was also a frequent contributor to the literary magazines The Yellow Book and The Savoy. Dowson collaborated on two unsuccessful novels with Arthur Moore, worked on a novel of his own, Madame de Viole, and wrote reviews for The Critic.

In 1889, at the age of twenty-three, Dowson fell in love with eleven-year-old Adelaide "Missie" Foltinowicz, the daughter of a Polish restaurant owner. Adelaide is reputed to be the subject of one his best-known poems, Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae. He pursued her unsuccessfully; in 1897, she married a tailor who lodged above her father's restaurant and Dowson was crushed. In August, 1894, Dowson's father, who was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis, died of an overdose of chloral hydrate. His mother, who was also consumptive, hanged herself in February, 1895, and soon Dowson began to decline rapidly.

Robert Sherard one day found Dowson almost penniless in a wine bar and took him back to the cottage in Catford where he was himself living. Dowson spent the last six weeks of his life at Sherard's cottage and died there of alcoholism at the age of 32. He is buried in the Roman Catholic section of nearby Brockley and Ladywell Cemeteries.

In anticipation of the anniversary of Dowson's birth on August 2, 2010, his grave, which had fallen derelict and been victimized by vandalism, was restored. The unveiling and memorial service were publicised in the local (South London Press) and national (BBC Radio 4 and the Times Literary Supplement) British press, and dozens paid posthumous tribute to the poet 110 years after his death.

Works

Dowson is best remembered for some vivid phrases, such as "days of wine and roses" from his poem "Vitae Summa Brevis" (1896), which appears in the stanza:

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.

and "gone with the wind", from Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae, the third stanza of which reads:

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.

The last line of this stanza, the last line of all four stanzas of the poem, was the inspiration for the song title "Always True to You in My Fashion" from Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter.

In her words, it was the "far away, faintly sad sound I wanted" of the third stanza's first line that inspired Margaret Mitchell to call her only novel Gone with the Wind.

He provides the earliest use of the word soccer in written language in the Oxford English Dictionary (although he spells it socca, presumably because it did not yet have a standard written form).

His prose works include the short stories collected as Dilemmas (1895), and the two novels A Comedy of Masks and Adrian Rome (each co-written with Arthur Moore). Some of his short prose was first published in the journal The Yellow Book.