Some Verses - Kostenloses Hörbuch

Some Verses is a slim early collection by Theodore Wratislaw, an English poet of the 1890s associated with the Decadent movement, published in 1892. His work shares the refined, world-weary sensuality of contemporaries such as Arthur Symons and Ernest Dowson, though he never became as well known as they did.

The book gathers a dozen short lyrics. Their titles, such as Sentimentalism, A Moment's Bliss, A Vain Desire, Envy, Reminiscence and Far Apart, give a fair sense of the territory: fleeting pleasures, longing that cannot be satisfied, love remembered after it has gone, and the distance between lovers. Other poems, like The Modern Siren and The Mad Sphinx, take up the period's fascination with the dangerous, enigmatic woman, while Morning and Requiem shift toward quieter moods of renewal and mourning. The verse is carefully crafted and musical, with the attention to sound and atmosphere typical of the decade.

Because the collection is so brief, it works well as a single sitting and as a sampler of a minor but characteristic voice of the fin de siècle. It will interest readers of Victorian and Decadent poetry, students of the 1890s, and anyone who enjoys Dowson, Symons or the early Yeats and wants to explore the less familiar names around them.