Decadent Love: Dowson's "Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae"

Ernest Dowson's poem — usually known by its refrain "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion" — is one of the defining texts of the 1890s Decadent movement. It is a poem about obsessive, inescapable love; about the failure of pleasure to distract from longing; and about a self-destructiveness that the speaker understands perfectly but cannot resist. It is also, in its musicality and emotional intensity, one of the most technically accomplished poems in the Pre-1900 anthology.

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Context

Ernest Dowson (1867–1900)