vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam
This kind of poem is by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900). Simply discussing him is a unhappy matter, mainly because Dowson was both students at Oxford for a time and a serious alcoholic in whose life finished far too early. We can extend the parallel further in he was a Roman Catholic by change. We should not be surprised that this individual titled his poem in Latin; it was in the times, after all, each time a knowledge of Latina was considered indispensable to a good education. So that is why students of English language poetry are faced with these kinds of Latin phrases at the head with the poem:
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam It implies, essentially, that the brief (brevis) sum (summa) of your life (vitae) forbids/prevents (vetat) all of us (nos) commencing (incohare) an extended (longam) hope (spem).
But we can consider it meaning just: The Lack of Existence Forbids All of us Long Desires
The term comes from lines in Épigramme 1 . 5, by the Both roman poet Horace (65-8 n.
c. elizabeth. ):
Dowson is speaking of the brevity of human being emotions. Weeping and laughter, love and desire and hate, he says, do not last for very long, and this individual thinks they will end with death (“passing the gate).
In like manner, this individual tells us, the periods of pleasure and happiness, which in turn he poetically terms “the days of wine and roses, are not long possibly. And as intended for our short life, it can be like a path seen coming out of a air, then evaporating into that same mist.
Dowson’s poem is irrefutably beautiful. Joy is short, life is brief and vague and a mystery, but also in reading these lines by Dowson we have to say that, as R. H. Blyth once remarked, put that way, it doesn’t sound really bad.
Dowson would have an expression for the poetic term. Many who have never read his poem know the words “the days of wine and roses, which were utilized for the title of your movie about a descent in to alcoholism. And it is from an additional poem by simply Dowson (Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae) the words come which offered the title to Margaret Mitchell’s novel and the famous film of the Civil War, Eliminated With the Wind.
One article writer calls Ernest Dowson “The incarnation of dissipation and decadence, which with the sad beauty of present poem, brings to mind the rather indelicate expression which a rose will develop out of your manure load ” the “pile in this case being Dowson’s decadent and deadly patterns. For him, the mix of an abnormal lifestyle and alcoholism with his tuberculosis proven quickly fatal. He passed away a few months beyond his 32nd year.
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