mists tremble, and the clouds are stirred:
When comes the calling word?

The clouds are breaking from the crystal ball,
Breaking and clearing: and I look to fall.
When the cold winds and airs of portent sweep,
My spirit may have sleep.

O rich and sounding voices of the air!
Interpreters and prophets of despair:
Priests of a fearful sacrament! I come,
To make with you mine home.

TO A TRAVELLER

The mountains, and the lonely death at last
Upon the lonely mountains: O strong friend!
The wandering over, and the labour passed,
Thou art indeed at rest:
Earth gave thee of her best,
That labour and this end.

Earth was thy mother, and her true son thou:
Earth called thee to a knowledge of her ways,
Upon the great hills, up the great streams: now
Upon earth's kindly breast
Thou art indeed at rest:
Thou, and thine arduous days.

Fare thee well, O strong heart! The tranquil night
Looks calmly on thee: and the sun pours down
His glory over thee, O heart of might!
Earth gives thee perfect rest:
Earth, whom thy swift feet pressed:
Earth, whom the vast stars crown.

_Ernest Dowson_

Ernest Dowson was born at Belmont Hill in Kent in 1867. His
great-uncle was Alfred Domett (Browning's "Waring"), who was at one
time Prime Minister of New Zealand. Dowson, practically an invalid all
his life, was reckless with himself and, as disease weakened him more
and more, hid himself in miserable surroundings; for almost two years
he lived in sordid supper-houses known as "cabmen's shelters." He
literally drank himself to death.

His delicate and fantastic poetry was an attempt to escape from a
reality too big and brutal for him. His passionate lyric, "I have been
faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion," a triumph of despair and
disillusion, is an outburst in which Dowson epitomized himself--"One
of the greatest lyrical poems of our time," writes Arthur Symons, "in
it he has for once said everything, and he has said it to an
intoxicating and perhaps immortal music."

Dowson died obscure in 1900, one of the finest of modern minor poets.
His life was the tragedy of a weak nature buffeted by a strong and
merciless environment.

TO ONE IN BEDLAM

With delicate, mad hands, behind his sordid bars,
Surely he hath his posies, which they tea