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You ask my love completest,
As strong next year as now,
The devil take you, sweetest,
Ere I make aught such vow.
Life is a masque that changes,
A fig for constancy!
No love at all were better,
Than love which is not free.

— Ernest Dowson Decorations (1899)

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More quotes by Ernest Dowson

The fairest face of all is the face I have not seen.

Decorations (1899)

O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust.

Decorations (1899)

Ah, God, that sweet things should decline,
And fires fade out which were not cold,
Erewhile.

Decorations (1899)

Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild,
But there, beside the altar, there, is rest.

Verses (1896)

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng.

Verses (1896)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ernest Dowson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.