In the Dark

The title of this poem by Ernest Dowson, Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, can be translated from my half-remembered schoolboy Latin as something like “the brief span of Life forbids us from conceiving an enduring hope”. It’s a quotation from one of the Odes of Horace (Book I, Ode 4, line 15):

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

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.

by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)

This entry was posted on August 6, 2016 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Poetry with tags Ernest Dowson, Horace, Poetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.