First, Ernest Dowson’s “Dregs”:
The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,
(This is the end of every song man sings!)
The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,
Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;
And health and hope have gone the way of love
Into the dear oblivion of lost things.
Ghosts go along with us until the end;
This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.
With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the dropped curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.
Well just watch Frankie Laine’s vitality at 92, crushing the pessimism of Dowson’s poem - click here.
To read The Saunterer’s post of August 5, 2009, titled "John Updike (1932-2009) giving the meaning of 'back there and then',” a tribute to the memory of Frankie Laine, click here.
(“Dregs” is quoted from page 19 of The Art of Aging: A Celebration of Old Age in Western Art, by Patrick McKee and Heta Kauppinen. Insight Books, 1987.)
For a brief biography of Frankie Laine, click here. For a brief biography of Ernest Dowson, click here.
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