1
Chris Greger
English 46C: Victorians and Moderns
Reading Selections for Unit 2:
Aestheticism and the Tragic Generation
In the 1890’s, the poet Yeats was living in London and hanging out with
a group of aspiring poets and literary types at a tavern on Fleet Street
called the Chesire Cheese. These young men, all in their twenties,
formed an association called “The Rhymer’s Club” and published two
short anthologies of their poems. Most of the poems (and the poets)
were quickly dubbed to be “decadent” and “aesthetic” (meant
derogatorily) by critics disapproving of their supposedly wild lifestyles
(which, for most, meant varying degrees of alcoholism).
Years later, in his autobiography, Yeats dubbed this group members of
the “Tragic Generation,” struggling to understand why considerable
poetic talent should seem locked in old forms, and come to such
fruitless ends. Those who identified them as ‘decadent’ referred to an
awareness on the part of the poets that they were living at the end of
things, in a world winding down, dwindling into inertia. In his
autobiography, Yeats wrote:
Why should men, who spoke their opinions in low voices, as though they
feared to disturb the readers in some ancient library, and timidly as
though they knew that all subjects had long since been explored, all
questions long since decided in books whereon the dust settled – live
lives of such disorder and seek to discover in verse the syntax of
impulsive common life? Was it that we lived in what is called ‘an age of
transition’ and so lacked coherence, or did we but pursue antithesis?
What might have caused such dissolution, such uncertainty and
tenuousness? Yeats himself identified Paterian aestheticism as linked,
1The book, though unnamed, shows up in The Picture of Dorian Gray as one of those
profound and fatal influences on Dorian’s being: can you spot it?
somehow, to his generation’s malaise (either as contributing factor or
concomitant phenomena): of the influence of Pater’s thought, Yeats
wrote later in his Autobiography:
If Rossetti was a subconscious influence, and perhaps the most powerful
of all, we looked consciously to Pater for our philosophy. Three or four
years ago I reread Marius the Epicurean, expecting to find I cared for it
no longer, but it still seemed to me, as I think it seemed to us all, the
only great prose in modern English, and yet I began to wonder if it, or
the attitude of mind of which it was the noblest expression, had not
caused the disaster of my friends. It taught us to walk upon a rope,
tightly stretched through serene air, and we were left to keep our feet
upon a swaying rope in a storm.
A decade earlier, French critic Jules Barbey D’Aurevilly, reviewing the
“decadent” novel A Rebours [usually translated as Against Nature in
English] by J. K. Huysmans (adored by Wilde and other members of the
tragic generation,)1 repeated the observation he made of Baudelaire’s
Les fleurs du mal, that “after such a book it only remains for the author
to choose between the muzzle of a pistol or the foot of the Cross.”
Members of the tragic generation usually opted for both. By 1900,
Wilde had died, penniless and Catholic in Paris. Of the poets included
here, Dowson died in penury, of alcohol poisoning at 32, and Johnson (a
repressed homosexual), after converting to ardent Catholicism, died of a
stroke incurred after falling off a bar stool at age 34. Only Yeats made
the transition to the Twentieth Century, transforming himself in midlife
to one of the most innovative of Modernists.

Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)
Villanelle on Sunset
Come hither, child, and rest,
This is the end of day,
Behold the weary West!
Sleep rounds with equal zest
Man's toil and children's play,
Come hither, child, and rest.
My white bird, seek thy nest,
Thy drooping head down lay,
Behold the weary West!
Now eve is manifest
And homeward lies our way,
Behold the weary West!
Tired flower! upon my breast
I would wear thee alway,
Come hither, child, and rest -
Behold the weary West!
Exile
By the sad waters of separation
Where we have wandered by divers ways,
I have but the shadow and imitation
Of the old memorial days.
In music I have no consolation,
No roses are pale enough for me;
The sound of the waters of separation
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Surpasseth roses and melody.
By the sad waters of separation
Dimly I hear from an hidden place
The sigh of mine ancient adoration:
Hardly can I remember your face.
If you be dead, no proclamation
Sprang to me over the waste, gray sea:
Living, the waters of separation
Sever for ever your soul from me.
No man knoweth our desolation;
Memory pales of the old delight;
While the sad waters of separation
Bear us on to the ultimate night.
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam
The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. –Horace
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.

Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
(From Horace – “I am not what I was under the reign of the lovely Cynara”)
[At 23 Ernest Dowson fell in love with the 11 year old daughter of a
polish restaurant owner, who is reputedly the inspiration for this poem.]
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee Cynara! in my fashion.
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Lionel Johnson (1867-1902)
The Destroyer of a Soul
It's generally believed that this sonnet was addressed to Oscar Wilde;
the soul is that of Alfred Douglas, whom Johnson had introduced to
Wilde in 1891.
To ————
I hate you with a necessary hate.
First, I sought patience: passionate was she:
My patience turned in very scorn of me,
That I should dare forgive a sin so great,
As this, through which I sit disconsolate;
Mourning for that live soul, I used to see;
Soul of a saint, whose friend I used to be:
Till you came by! a cold, corrupting, fate.
Why come you now? You, whom I cannot cease
With pure and perfect hate to hate? Go, ring
The death-bell with a deep, triumphant toll!
Say you, my friend sits by me still? Ah, peace!
Call you this thing my friend? this nameless thing?
This living body, hiding its dead soul?
The Dark Angel
Dark angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!
Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!
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When music sounds, then changest thou Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
Its silvery to a sultry fire: The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Nor will thine envious heart allow Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
Delight untortured by desire. The minstrel of mine epitaph.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn, I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
To Furies, O mine Enemy! Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
And all the things of beauty burn Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
With flames of evil ecstasy. Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:

Because of thee, the land of dreams The second Death, that never dies,
Becomes a gathering place of fears: That cannot die, when time is dead:
Until tormented slumber seems Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
One vehemence of useless tears. Eternally uncomforted.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers, Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Or ripples down the dancing sea: Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers, Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me. Than thine eternity of cares.

Within the breath of autumn woods, Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Within the winter silences: Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods, Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
O Master of impieties! Divine, to the Divinity.

The ardour of red flame is thine,

And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;

Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Gerard Manley Hopkins
The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899) was mostly
unknown until 1918, when it was published (29 years after his death) by
his literary executor, Robert Bridges. He was immediately hailed as a
literary pioneer, a “Modern” set amidst his Victorian peers, who had
fallen out of fashion by the early 20th century. Most of the poems here
were written in the late 1870’s.
To me, Hopkins represents a different response to the aestheticism of
Walter Pater, a stark contrast to the melancholy despair of the poets of
the “Tragic Generation.” As a student at Oxford, Hopkins studied with
both Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater, though Pater had by far a
greater influence on him – evident in the poet’s keen apprehension of
sensuous beauty and the natural world, and in his deeply subjective and
idiosyncratic use of imagery and sound.
In 1866 Hopkins converted to Roman Catholicism (anticipating the later
fin-de-siecle drift of English aesthetes to the Catholic faith); he
eventually became a priest n the Jesuit order, and in 1884 was appointed
professor of Classics at University College Dublin. The first poem in
this collection represents one of what he referred to as his “Terrible
Sonnets,” expressing his doubts and the despair doubt causes. But
elsewhere, Hopkin’s wonderful poetry finds everywhere in nature
startling testament to God’s power, flickering through our senses.
More than the other aesthetic poets, Hopkins is a poet of sound, rather
than image and idea (though they are present, too). Try reading these
aloud, and just listen…
2
“Carrion comfort” refers to the satisfaction of giving into despair – implicitly
likened to a vulture’s satisfaction in feasting on dead flesh.
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Carrion Comfort2
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that
year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
\ These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
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The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
The Starlight Night
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.