{"product_id":"decadent-poetry-isbn-9780140424133","title":"Decadent Poetry","description":"The poems collected in this volume are exquisite and languorous expressions of a spirit of self-indulgence, eroticism and moral rebelliousness that emerged in the late Victorian age. They deal with eternal themes of transition, artifice and, above all, the cruel ravages of time - often depicting flowers, with their heady, perfumed beauty, as the embodiment of decay and desire. Decadent Poetry brings together the works of many fascinating writers - Oscar Wilde on tainted love and the torments of the human spirit, Arthur Symons on an absinthe-induced stupor and the mysteries of the night, Rosamund Marriott Watson on disenchantment and memory, W. B. Yeats on waning passion and faded beauty, Ernest Dowson on lust and despair and Lord Alfred Douglas on shame and secret love, among many others of this exhilarating poetic movement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.\u003cb\u003eLisa Rodensky \u003c\/b\u003eis Assistant Professor of English at Wellesley College, and author of The Crime in Mind (OUP, 2003). .\u003cb\u003eThe Harlot's House\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe caught the tread of dancing feet,\u003cbr\u003eWe loitered down the moonlit street,\u003cbr\u003eAnd stopped beneath the harlot's house.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInside, above the din and fray,\u003cbr\u003eWe heard the loud musicians play\u003cbr\u003eThe 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike strange mechanical grotesques,\u003cbr\u003eMaking fantasies arabesques,\u003cbr\u003eThe shadows raced across the blind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWe watched the ghostly dancers spin\u003cbr\u003eTo sound of horn and violin,\u003cbr\u003eLike black leaves wheeling in the wind.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLike wire-pulled automatons,\u003cbr\u003eSlim silhouetted skeletons\u003cbr\u003eWent sidling through the slow quadrille.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThey took each other by the hand,\u003cbr\u003eAnd danced a stately saraband;\u003cbr\u003eTheir laughter echoed thin and shrill.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes a clockwork puppet pressed\u003cbr\u003eA phantom lover to her breast,\u003cbr\u003eSometimes they seemed to try to sing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eSometimes a horrible marionette\u003cbr\u003eCame out, and smoked its cigarette\u003cbr\u003eUpon the steps like a live thing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen, turning to my love, I said,\u003cbr\u003e'The dead are dancing with the dead,\u003cbr\u003eThe dust is whirling with the dust.'\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut she —she heard the violin,\u003cbr\u003eAnd left my side, and entered in:\u003cbr\u003eLove passed into the house of lust.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen suddenly the tune went false,\u003cbr\u003eThe dancers wearied of the waltz,\u003cbr\u003eThe shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd down the long and silent street,\u003cbr\u003eThe dawn, with silver-sandalled feet,\u003cbr\u003eCrept like a frightened girl.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Art of Love\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBook 1\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eShould anyone here in Rome lack finesse at love-making,\u003cbr\u003elet him\u003cbr\u003eTry me—read my book; and results are guaranteed!\u003cbr\u003eTechnique is the secret. Charioteer, sailor, oarsman,\u003cbr\u003eAll need it. Technique can control\u003cbr\u003eLove himself. As Automedon was charioteer to Achilles,\u003cbr\u003eAnd Tiphys Jason's steersman, so I,\u003cbr\u003eBy Venus' appointment, am made Love's artificer, shall be\u003cbr\u003eKnown as\u003cbr\u003eThe Tiphys, the very Automedon of Love.\u003cbr\u003eHe's a wild handful, will often rebel against me,\u003cbr\u003eBut still just a child—\u003cbr\u003eMalleable, easily disciplined. Chiron made young Achilles\u003cbr\u003eA fine musician, hammered that fierce heart\u003cbr\u003eOn the anvil of peaceful artistry. So this future terror\u003cbr\u003eTo friend and foe alike went in awe, it's said,\u003cbr\u003eOf his elderly teacher, at whose bidding the hand that in after-\u003cbr\u003eTime bore down Hector was held out for the tawse.\u003cbr\u003eAs Chiron taught Achilles, so I am Love's preceptor:\u003cbr\u003eWild boys both, both goddess-born—and yet\u003cbr\u003eEven bulls can be broken to plough, or spirited horses\u003cbr\u003eSubdued with bridle and bit.\u003cbr\u003eSo love shall likewise own my mastery, though his bowshots\u003cbr\u003eSkewer my breast, though his torch\u003cbr\u003eFlicker and sear me. The worse the wounds, the deeper the branding,\u003cbr\u003eThat much keener I to avenge\u003cbr\u003eSuch outrage. Nor shall I falsely ascribe my arts to Apollo:\u003cbr\u003eNo airy bird comes twittering advice\u003cbr\u003eInto \u003ci\u003emy\u003c\/i\u003e eat, \u003ci\u003eI\u003c\/i\u003e never had a vision of the Muses\u003cbr\u003eHerding sheep in Ascra's valleys. This work is based\u003cbr\u003eOn experience: what I write, believe me, I have practiced.\u003cbr\u003eMy poem will deal in truth.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAid my enterprise, Venus! Respectable ladies, the kind who\u003cbr\u003eWear hairbands and ankle-length skirts,\u003cbr\u003eAre hereby warned off. Safe love, legitimate liaisons\u003cbr\u003eWill be my theme. This poem breaks no taboos.\u003cbr\u003eFirst, then, you fledging troopers in passion's service,\u003cbr\u003eComes the task of finding an object for your love.\u003cbr\u003eNext, you must labour to woo and win your lady;\u003cbr\u003eThirdly, ensure that the affair will last.\u003cbr\u003eSuch are my limitations, such the ground I will cover,\u003cbr\u003eThe race I propose to run.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile you are fancy-free still, and can drive at leisure,\u003cbr\u003ePick a girl, tell her, \"you're the one I love.\u003cbr\u003eAnd only you.' But this search means using your eyes: a\u003cbr\u003emistress\u003cbr\u003eWon't drop out of the sky at your fee.\u003cbr\u003eA hunter's skilled where to spread his nets for the stag, senses\u003cbr\u003eIn which glen the wild boar lurks.\u003cbr\u003eA fowler's familiar with copses, an expert angler\u003cbr\u003eKnows the richest shoaling-grounds for fish.\u003cbr\u003eYou too, so keen to establish some long term relationship,\u003cbr\u003eMust learn, first, where girl is to be found.\u003cbr\u003eYour search need not take you—belueve me—on an overseas\u003cbr\u003evoyage:\u003cbr\u003eA short enough trek will bring you to your goal.\u003cbr\u003eTrue, Perseus fetched home Andromeda from the coloured\u003cbr\u003eIndies,\u003cbr\u003eWhile Phrygian Paris abducted Helen in Greece,\u003cbr\u003eBut Rome can boast of so many and such dazzling beauties\u003cbr\u003eYou'd swear the whole world's talent was gathered here.\u003cbr\u003eThe girls of your city outnumber Gargara's wheatsheaves,\u003cbr\u003eMethymna's grape-clusters,\u003cbr\u003eBirds on the bough, stars in the sky, fish in the ocean:\u003cbr\u003eVenus indeed still haunts\u003cbr\u003eHer son Aeneas' foundation. If you like budding adolescents\u003cbr\u003eAny number of (guaranteed) maidens are here to delight\u003cbr\u003eYour roving eye. Your prefer young women? They'll charm you\u003cbr\u003eBy the thousand, you won't know which to choose.\u003cbr\u003eAnd if you happen to fancy a more mature, experienced\u003cbr\u003eAge-group, believe me, \u003ci\u003ethey\u003c\/i\u003e show up in droves.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere's what to do. When the sun's on the back of Hercules'\u003cbr\u003eLion, stroll down some shady colonnade,\u003cbr\u003ePompey's, say, or Octavia's (for her dead son Marcellus:\u003cbr\u003eExtravagant marble facings, R.I.P.),\u003cbr\u003eOr Livia's, with its gallery of genuine Old Masters,\u003cbr\u003eOr the Danaids' Portico (note\u003cbr\u003eThe artwork: Danaus' daughters plotting mischief for their cousins,\u003cbr\u003eFather attitudinizing with drawn sword).\u003cbr\u003eDon't miss the shrine of Adonis, mourned by Venus,\u003cbr\u003eOr the synagogue—Syrian Jews\u003cbr\u003eWorship there each Sabbath—or the linen-clad heifer-goddess's\u003cbr\u003eMemphian temple: Io makes many a maid what \u003ci\u003eshe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWas to Jove. The very courts are hunting-grounds for passion;\u003cbr\u003eAmid lawyers' rebuttals love will often be found.\u003cbr\u003eHere, where under Venus' marble temple the Appian\u003cbr\u003eFountain pulses its jets high in the air,\u003cbr\u003eYour jurisconsult's entrapped by love's beguilements—\u003cbr\u003eCounsel to others, he cannot advise himself.\u003cbr\u003eHere, all too often, words fail the most eloquent pleader,\u003cbr\u003eAnd a new sort of case comes on—his own. He must\u003cbr\u003eDefend \u003ci\u003ehimself\u003c\/i\u003e for a change, while Venus in her nearby\u003cbr\u003eTemple snickers at this reversal of roles.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Penguin Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300996075749,"sku":"NP9780140424133","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780140424133.jpg?v=1767724928","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/decadent-poetry-isbn-9780140424133","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}