false 609520 014042413X 9780140424133 12 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1176269592m/609520.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/609520.Decadent_Poetry_from_Wilde_to_Naidu 330222 Lisa Rodensky 12 3 1 1 false Sun Apr 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Apr 05 01:11:15 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 13 04:40:05 -0700 2008
The sky is up above the roof
So blue, so soft!
A tree there, up above the roof,
Swayeth aloft.

A bell within that sky we see,
Chimes low and faint:
A bird upon that tree we see
Maketh complaint.

Etc. etc. just awful! Those are the first two stanzas of an Ernest Dowson poem decadently entitled "After Paul Verlaine IV"

And to add insult to sensual perfumèd injury, there are some very bad early Yeats poems included here too. Apparently he was "decadent" as a youth:

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wove with silken thread...

I mean really, did they scrape that poem out of Yeats's septic tank decades after he flushed it?

Max Beerbohm's poems here are pretty decent though.

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