Ernest Christopher Dowson

Born in 1867, Ernest Dowson was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer associated with the Decadent movement of the 1890s. He moved in the literary circles of fin-de-siècle London and became known for richly musical poems shaped by longing, loss, and a sense of beauty slipping away.

Dowson is especially remembered for poems including Non Sum Qualis eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae and Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam. Phrases from his work entered common literary culture, and his reputation has endured because of the haunting grace of his language as much as for the story of his brief, troubled life.

He died in 1900 at the age of 32, but his work remains one of the clearest expressions of English Decadence: wistful, elegant, and quietly unforgettable.