...Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890's: An Anthology of British Poetry and Prose (Paperback)...seriously addictive. beardsley illustration. read by candlelight with louis jadot in hand. pretend absinthe is still legal and that sun still never sets on the british empire...
(excerpts)
Spleen
(For Arthur Symons)
I was not sorrowful, I could not weep,
And all my memories were put to sleep.
I watched the river grow more white and strange,
All day till evening I watched it change.
All day till evening I watched the rain
Beat wearily upon the window pane
I was not sorrowful, but only tired
Of everything that ever I desired.
Her lips, her eyes, all day became to me
The shadow of a shadow utterly.
All day mine hunger for her heart became
Oblivion, until the evening came,
And left me sorrowful, inclined to weep,
With all my memories that could not sleep.
(Ernest Dowson 1896)
THE HARLOT'S HOUSE
by: Oscar Wilde
E caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot's house.
Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The "Treues Liebes Herz" of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons,
Slim silhouetted skeletons
Went sidling through the slow quadrille.
The took each other by the hand,
And danced a stately saraband;
Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed
A phantom lover to her breast,
Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette
Came out, and smoked its cigarette
Upon the steps like a live thing.
Then, turning to my love, I said,
"The dead are dancing with the dead,
The dust is whirling with the dust."
But she--she heard the violin,
And left my side, and entered in:
Love passed into the house of lust.
Then suddenly the tune went false,
The dancers wearied of the waltz,
The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.
And down the long and silent street,
The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,
Crept like a frightened girl.
'The Harlot's House' was originally published in The Dramatic Review (April, 1885).
Nothing
(Theodore Wraitslaw) 1893
There's a murmur on the hillside
And there's laughter on the sea,
But the day that brings forth gladness
Brings my sorrow unto me.
All along the sunny beaches
Laughs the world beside the sea,
But the laughter is with others
And the sorrow rests with me.
