Edward Dowden

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Edward Dowden Poems

My long first year of perfect love,
My deep new dream of joy; She was a little chubby girl,
I was a chubby boy.
...

PAST the town's clamour is a garden full
Of loneness and old greenery; at noon
When birds are hush'd, save one dim cushat's croon,
A ripen'd silence hangs beneath the cool
...

UNDER the flaming wings of cherubim
I moved toward that high altar. O, the hour!
And the light waxed intenser, and the dim
Low edges of the hills and the grey sea
...

I found Thee in my heart, O Lord,
As in some secret shrine;
I knelt, I waited for Thy word,
I joyed to name Thee mine.
...

THE altar-lights burn low, the incense-fume
Sickens: O listen, how the priestly prayer
Runs as a fenland stream; a dim despair
Hails through their chaunt of praise, who here inhume
...

WHY do I make no poems? Good my friend
Now is there silence through the summer woods,
In whose green depths and lawny solitudes
The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend
...

MAKE thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair
Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait
Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate
Hides 'twixt the lips which smile and still forbear?
...

IF while I sit flatter'd by this warm sun
Death came to me, and kiss'd my mouth and brow,
And eyelids which the warm light hovers through,
I should not count it strange. Being half won
...

AN ODE
(By a Western Spinning Dervish)
...

THE bow of promise, this lost flaring star,
Terror and hope are in mid-heaven; but She,
The mighty-wing'd crown'd Lady Melancholy,
Heeds not. O to what vision'd goal afar
...

THE grass around my limbs is deep and sweet;
Yonder the house has lost its shadow wholly,
The blinds are dropped, and softly now and slowly
The day flows in and floats; a calm retreat
...

SINCE Thou dost clothe Thyself to-day in cloud,
Lord God in heaven, and no voice low or loud
Proclaims Thee,--see, I turn me to the Earth,
Its wisdom and its sorrow and its mirth,
...

IF any sense in mortal dust remains
When mine has been refin'd from flower to flower,
Won from the sun all colours, drunk the shower
And delicate winy dews, and gain'd the gains
...

SPRING scarce had greener fields to show than these
Of mid September; through the still warm noon
The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune
Than ever in the summer; from the trees
...

IN the Dean's porch a nest of clay
With five small tentants may be seen;
Five solemn faces, each as wise
As if its owner were a Dean.
...

STILL deep into the West I gazed; the light
Clear, spiritual, tranquil as a bird
Wide-winged that soars on the smooth gale and sleeps,
Was it from sun far-set or moon unrisen?
...

With brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,—
And all forms mean,—to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
...

QUEEN-MOON of this enchanted summer night,
One virgin slave companioning thee,--I lie
Vacant to thy possession as this sky
Conquer'd and calm'd by thy rejoicing might;
...

WHEN weight of all the garner’d years
Bows me, and praise must find relief
In harvest-song, and smiles and tears
Twist in the band that binds my sheaf;
...

HERE I am slave of visions. When noon heat
Strikes the red walls, and their environ'd air
Lies steep'd in sun; when not a creature dare
Affront the fervour, from my dim retreat
...

Edward Dowden Biography

Edward Dowden was born in Cork, County Cork, Ireland. Irish critic, biographer, and poet, noted for his critical work on Shakespeare. Educated at Queen's College, Cork, and Trinity College, Dublin, Dowden became professor of English literature at Trinity in 1867 and lectured at Oxford (1890-93) and Cambridge (1893-96). His Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (1875) was the first book in English to attempt a unified and rounded picture of Shakespeare's development as an artist, studying him in terms of successive periods. His other works on Shakespeare include the primer Shakspere (1877), which was written for a nonacademic audience, and several edited collections of sonnets. He also provided the text to accompany the illustrations in Shakespeare Scenes and Characters (1876). His wide interests and scholarly methods made his influence on criticism both sound and stimulating, and his own ideals are well described in his essay on The Interpretation of Literature in his Transcripts and Studies. As commissioner of education in Ireland (1896–1901), trustee of the National Library of Ireland, secretary of the Irish Liberal Union and vice-president of the Irish Unionist Alliance, he enforced his view that literature should not be divorced from practical life. His biographical/critical concepts, particularly in connection with Shakespeare, are played with by Stephen Dedalus in the library chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses. Leslie Fiedler was to play with them again in The Stranger in Shakespeare. Dowden married twice, first (1866) Mary Clerke, and secondly (1895) Elizabeth Dickinson West, daughter of the dean of St Patrick's. His daughter, Hester Dowden, was a well-known spiritualist medium)

The Best Poem Of Edward Dowden

First Love

My long first year of perfect love,
My deep new dream of joy; She was a little chubby girl,
I was a chubby boy.

I wore a crimson frock, white drawers,
A belt, a crown was on it;
She wore some angel's kind of dress
And such a tiny bonnet,

Old-fashioned, but the soft brown hair Would never keep its place;
A little maid with violet eyes,
And sunshine in her face.

O my child-queen, in those lost days
How sweet was daily living!
How humble and how proud I grew,
How rich by merely giving!

She went to school, the parlour-maid
Slow stepping to her trot;
That parlour-maid, ah, did she feel
How lofty was her lot!
Across the road I saw her lift
My Queen, and with a sigh
I envied Raleigh; my new coat
Was hung a peg too high.

A hoard of never-given gifts
I cherished, priceless pelf;
'Twas two whole days ere I devoured
That peppermint myself.

In Church I only prayed for her
'O God bless Lucy Hill;'
Child, may His angels keep their arms
Ever around you still.

But when the hymn came round, with heart
That feared some heart's surprising
Its secret sweet, I climbed the seat
'Mid rustling and uprising;

And there against her mother's arm
The sleeping child was leaning,
While far away the hymn went on,
The music and the meaning.

Oh I loved with more of pain
Since then, with more of passion,
Loved with the aching in my love
After our grown-up fashion;

Yet could I almost be content
To lose here at your feet
A year or two, you murmuring elm,
To dream a dream so sweet.

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