Poems

Edward Dowden

Poems

Sharp Ink Publishing

2024

Contact: [email protected]

ISBN 978-80-282-3345-7

Table of Contents

PREFACE

THE WANDERER

THE FOUNTAIN (An Introduction To the Sonnets)

IN THE GALLERIES

I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE

II. THE VENUS OF MELOS

III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS

IV. LEONARDO’S MONNA LISA

V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN

ON THE HEIGHTS

LA RÉVÉLATION PAR LE DÉSERT

THE MORNING STAR

I

II

III

A CHILD’S NOONDAY SLEEP

IN THE GARDEN

I. THE GARDEN

II. VISIONS

III. AN INTERIOR

IV. THE SINGER

V. A SUMMER MOON

VI. A PEACH

VII. EARLY AUTUMN

VIII. LATER AUTUMN

THE HEROINES

HELENA (Tenth year of Troy-Siege)

ATALANTA

EUROPA

ANDROMEDA

EURYDICE

BY THE SEA

I. THE ASSUMPTION

II. THE ARTIST’S WAITING

III. COUNSELLORS

IV. EVENING

V. JOY

VI. OCEAN

VII. NEWS FOR LONDON

AMONG THE ROCKS

TO A YEAR

A SONG OF THE NEW DAY

SWALLOWS

MEMORIALS OF TRAVEL

I. COACHING

II. IN A MOUNTAIN PASS

III. THE CASTLE

IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία

V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF

VI. ASCETIC NATURE

VII. RELICS

VIII. ON THE PIER OF BOULOGNE

IX. DOVER

AN AUTUMN SONG

BURDENS

SONG (From ’ Tis Pity she’s a Queen.— A.D. 1610.)

ACT IV. SCENE 2.

BY THE WINDOW

SUNSETS

OASIS

FOREIGN SPEECH

IN THE TWILIGHT

THE INNER LIFE

I. A DISCIPLE

II. THEISTS

III. SEEKING GOD

IV. DARWINISM IN MORALS

V. AWAKENING

VI. FISHERS

VII. COMMUNION

VIII. A SONNET FOR THE TIMES

IX. EMMAUSWARD

X. A FAREWELL

XI. DELIVERANCE

XII. PARADISE LOST

THE RESTING PLACE

NEW HYMNS FOR SOLITUDE

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE

FIRST LOVE

THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE: AN ODE (By a Western Spinning Dervish)

BEAU RIVAGE HOTEL SATURDAY EVENING

IN A JUNE NIGHT (A Study in the manner of Robert Browning)

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER

I. BEAUTY

II. TWO INFINITIES

III. THE DAWN

IV. THE SKYLARK

V. THE MILL-RACE

VI. IN THE WOOD

VII. THE PAUSE OF EVENING

VIII. IN JULY

IX. IN SEPTEMBER

X. IN THE WINDOW

XI. AN AUTUMN MORNING

SEA VOICES

ABOARD THE SEA-SWALLOW

SEA-SIGHING

IN THE MOUNTAINS

THE TOP OF A HILL CALLED CLEAR (In sight of the Celestial City)

THE INITIATION

RENUNCIANTS

SPEAKERS TO GOD

First Speaker

Second Speaker

Third Speaker

POESIA (To a Painter)

MUSICIANS

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS

A DAY OF DEFECTION

SONG AND SILENCE

LOVE-TOKENS

A DREAM

MICHELANGELESQUE

LIFE’S GAIN

COMPENSATION

TO A CHILD DEAD AS SOON AS BORN

BROTHER DEATH

THE MAGE

WISE PASSIVENESS

THE SINGER’S PLEA

THE TRESPASSER

RITUALISM

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

KING MOB

THE MODERN ELIJAH

DAVID AND MICHAL (2 Samuel vi. 16)

WINDLE-STRAWS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS OF LATER DATES

AT THE OAR

THE DIVINING ROD

SALOME (By Henri Regnault)

WATERSHED

THE GUEST

MORITURUS

ALONE

FAME

WHERE WERT THOU?

A WISH

THE GIFT

RECOVERY

IF IT MIGHT BE

WINTER NOONTIDE

THE POOL

THE DESIRE TO GIVE

A BEECH-TREE IN WINTER

JUDGMENT

DÜRER’S MELENCHOLIA

MILLET’S THE SOWER

AT MULLION (CORNWALL) Sunday

THE WINNOWER TO THE WINDS (From Joachim de Bellay)

EMERSON

SENT TO AN AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY

NOCTURNE

THE WHIRLIGIG

PARADISE LOST AND FOUND

AFTER METASTASIO

THE CORN-CRAKE

I

II

III

IV

V

IN THE CATHEDRAL

EDGAR ALLAN POE (Read at the Centenary Celebration, University of Virginia, 19th Jan. 1909)

DEUS ABSCONDITUS

SUBLIMINAL

LOUISA SHORE (Author of Hannibal, a Drama)

FLOWERS FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE

TO HESTER (At the Piano)

UNUTTERED

IMITATED FROM J. SOULARY’S LE FOSSOYEUR

IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S GANYMEDE

WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS

PROLOGUE TO MAURICE GEROTHWOHL’S VERSION OF VIGNY’S CHATTERTON (March 1909)

A SONG

THE DROPS OF NECTAR. 1789 Imitated from Goethe’s Die Nektartropfen

AMOR AS LANDSCAPE-PAINTER Imitated from Goethe’s Amor als Landschaftsmaler

THE WANDERER Imitated from Goethe’s Der Wanderer

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

Woman

Wanderer

IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S ALEXIS AND DORA

PREFACE

Table of Contents

Goethe

says in a little poem[A] that Poems are stained glass windows—"Gedichte sind gemalte Fensterscheiben—to be seen aright not from the market-place but only from the interior of the church, die heilige Kapelle: and that der Herr Philister (equivalent for indolent Reviewer) glances at them from without and gets out of temper because he finds them unintelligible from his market-place standpoint. This comparison is a pretty conceit, and holds good as a half truth—but not more than a half: for while the artist who paints his church windows needs only to make them beautiful from within, the maker of poems must so shape and colour his work that its outer side—the technical, towards the market-place" of the public—shall have no lack of beauty, though differing from the beauty visible from the spiritual interior.

[A] Sechzehn Parabeln, Gedichte, Leoper’s edition (p. 180) of Goethe’s Gedichte.

The old volume of Edward Dowden’s Poems of 1876, which is now reprinted with additions, has been, to a limited extent, long before the public—seen from the market-place by general critics, who, for the most part, approved the outer side of the painted windows, and seen perhaps from within by some few like-minded readers, who, though no definite door was opened into "die heilige Kapelle," somehow entered in.

But a great many people, to whom the author’s prose works are well known, have never even heard that he had written poetry. This is due in a measure to the fact that the published book of poems only got into circulation by its first small edition. Its second edition found a silent apotheosis in flame at a great fire at the publisher’s in London, in which nearly the whole of it perished.

Edward Dowden’s chief work has been as a prose writer. That fact remains—yet it is accidental rather than essential. In the early seventies he felt the urge very strongly towards making verse his vocation in life, and he probably would have yielded to it, but for the necessity to be bread-winner for a much-loved household. Poetry is a ware of small commercial value, as most poets—at least for a long space of their lives—have known, and prose, for even a young writer of promise, held out prospects of bread for immediate eating. Hence to prose he turned, and on that road went his way, and whether the accidental circumstances that determined his course at the parting of the ways wrought loss or gain for our literature, who can say?

But he never wholly abandoned verse, and all through his life, even to the very end, he would fitfully, from time to time, utter in it a part of himself which never found complete issue in prose and which was his most real self.

Perhaps the nearest approaches to his utterance in poetry occurred sometimes in his College lecturing, when in the midst of a written discourse he would interrupt it and stop and liberate his heart in a little rush of words—out of the depths, accompanied by that familiar gesture of his hands which always came to him when emotionally stirred in speaking. Some of his students have told me that they usually found those little extempore bits in a lecture by far the most illuminated and inspiring parts of it, especially as it was then that his voice, always musical in no common degree, vibrated, and acquired a richer tone.

In his prose writings in general he seemed to curb and restrain himself. That he did so was by no means an evil, for the habitual retinence in his style gave to the little rare outbreaks of emotion the quality of charm that we find in a tender flower growing out of a solid stone wall unexpectedly.

Not infrequently a sort of hard irony was employed by him, as restraint on enthusiasm, with occasional loosening of the curb.

In Edward Dowden’s soul there seemed to be capacities which might, under other circumstances, have made him more than a minor poet. His was a more than usually rich, sensuous nature. This, combined with absolute purity—the purity not of ice and snow, but of fire. And, superadded, was an unlimited capacity for sternness—that quality which, as salt, acts as preservative of all human ardours. He came from his Maker, fashioned out of the stuff whereof are made saints, patriots, martyrs, and the great lovers in the world. His work as a scholar never obliterated anything of this in him. By this, his erudition gained richness—the richness of vital blood. It was as no anæmic recluse that he dwelt amongst his book-shelves, and hence no Faust-like weariness of intellectual satiety ever came to him, no sense of being "beschränkt mit diesem Bücherhauf" in his surroundings of his library (which latterly had grown to some twenty-four thousand volumes). He lived in company with these in a twofold way, keenly and accurately grasping all their textual details, and at the same time valuing them for the sake, chiefly, of spiritual converse with the writers.

Besides the spiritual converse he gained thus, he found, as a book-lover, a fertile source of recreation in the collecting of literary rarities, old books, MSS. and curiosities. In this he felt the keen zest of a sportsman. This was his shooting on the moors, his fishing in the rivers. No living creature ever lost its life for his amusement, but in this innocuous play he found unfailing pleasure, and many a piece of luck he had with his gun or rod in hitting some rare bird, or landing some big prize of a fish out of old booksellers’ catalogues or the carts in the back streets.

His physical nature was fully and strongly developed, and it is out of strong physical instincts that strong spiritual instincts often grow—the boundary line between them being undefined.

His one athletic exercise—swimming—was to him a joy of no common sort. He gave himself to the sea with an eagerness of body, soul and spirit, breasting the bright waters exultingly on many a summer’s day on some West of Ireland or Cornish shore, revelling in the sea’s life and in his own.

And akin to that, in the sensuous, spiritual region of the soul, was his feeling for all External Nature, his deep delight in the coming of each new Spring—its blackthorn blossoms, its hazel and willow catkins, its daffodils—and his response, as the year went on