leaving much of himself unexpressed, because he would not permit himself
to express nothing imperfectly, or according to anything but his own
conception of the dignity of poetry. In the lyric in which he has
epitomised himself and his whole life, a lyric which is certainly one of
the greatest lyrical poems of our time, "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub
regno Cynarae," he has for once said everything, and he has said it to an
intoxicating and perhaps immortal music.

Here, perpetuated by some unique energy of a temperament rarely so much the
master of itself, is the song of passion and the passions, at their eternal
war in the soul which they quicken or deaden, and in the body which they
break down between them. In the second book, the book of "Decorations,"
there are a few pieces which repeat, only more faintly, this very personal
note. Dowson could never have developed; he had already said, in his
first book of verse, all that he had to say. Had he lived, had he gone on
writing, he could only have echoed himself; and probably it would have been
the less essential part of himself; his obligation to Swinburne, always
evident, increasing as his own inspiration failed him. He was always
without ambition, writing to please his own fastidious taste, with a kind
of proud humility in his attitude towards the public, not expecting or
requiring recognition. He died obscure, having ceased to care even for the
delightful labour of writing. He died young, worn out by what was never
really life to him, leaving a little verse which has the pathos of things
too young and too frail ever to grow old.

ARTHUR SYMONS.
1900.