"The Soul's Progress"

Please bear with me as I stay in the 1890s a moment longer.  Ernest Dowson's "Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam" is reminiscent of "The Soul's Progress," a sonnet by Dowson's fellow Decadent, Arthur Symons (he of "grey" and "twilight").  Symons's poem was published in 1889, seven years prior to the publication of "Vitae summa brevis."  I am not suggesting that "The Soul's Progress" was a direct influence on Dowson.  However, the two poems do, I think, show the common dreamy world inhabited by the Decadents.

                     Ethelbert White, "The Farm by the Brook" (1928-1929)

                  The Soul's Progress

It enters life it knows not whence; there lies
A mist behind it and a mist before.
It stands between a closed and open door.
It follows hope, yet feeds on memories.
The years are with it, and the years are wise;
It learns the mournful lesson of their lore.
It hears strange voices from an unknown shore,
Voices that will not answer to its cries.

Blindly it treads dim ways that wind and twist;
It sows for knowledge, and it gathers pain;
Stakes all on love, and loses utterly.
Then, going down into the darker mist,
Naked, and blind, and blown with wind and rain,
It staggers out into eternity.

Arthur Symons, Days and Nights (1889).

Come to think of it, Symons, like Dowson, echoes Christina Rossetti, a non-Decadent if ever there was one.  "Stakes all on love, and loses utterly" is perhaps a line that Rossetti would particularly sympathize with.

                          Ethelbert White, "Edge of the Village" (1924)

"Be Frugal In The Gift Of Love"

One of the nice things about poetry is that one thing leads to another. Elizabeth Jennings's poem "Delay" ends with this lovely line:  "And love arrived may find us somewhere else."  I had been thinking about the line over the past couple of days.  And then the following poem by Richard Church (1893-1972) arrived out of the past.

                  Be Frugal  

Be frugal in the gift of love,

Lest you should kindle in return

Love like your own, that may survive

Long after yours has ceased to burn.

For in life's later years you may

Meet with the ghost of what you woke

And shattered at a second stroke.

God help you on that fatal day.

Richard Church, The Solitary Man (1941).

In mid-20th century England, Richard Church was what used to be called "a man of letters."  He and his work are now mostly forgotten, I fear.  I have spent some time with his poetry over the years, and there are several quiet, fine poems like "Be Frugal" to be found there.  I am not suggesting that his work should displace that of the "Major Poets."  However, I now find that it is individual poems, not poets, that are most important to me.  I first read "Be Frugal" perhaps 20 (or is it 30?) years ago.  Now it unaccountably returns and delights me once again.

                                   Ethelbert White, "Early Spring" (1919)