“They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”

—  Ernest Dowson

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam (1896). This title too is from Horace: "The short span of life forbids us to entertain long hopes."

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "They are not long, the days of wine and roses; Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within…" by Ernest Dowson?
Ernest Dowson photo
Ernest Dowson 5
English writer 1867–1900

Related quotes

William Least Heat-Moon photo

“What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of?”

William Least Heat-Moon book Blue Highways

Part Four, Chapter 12.
Blue Highways (1982)
Context: What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.

Thomas Moore photo

“There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Part II.
Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part I-III: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan

Langston Hughes photo

“Dream within a dream,
Our dream deferred.
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard?”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Island"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
Variant: What happens
to a dream deferred?
Daddy, ain’t you heard?

Richelle Mead photo

“What are you, Rose Hathaway? Are you real? You're a dream within a dream. I'm afraid touching you will make me wake up. You'll disappear.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
Dinah Craik photo

“And all day long, so close and near,
As in a mystic dream I hear
Their gentle accents kind and dear —
The old familiar voices.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"Magnus and Morna", in Thirty Years, Poems New and Old (1880)
Context: And all day long, so close and near,
As in a mystic dream I hear
Their gentle accents kind and dear —
The old familiar voices.
They have no sound that I can reach —
But silence sweeter is than speech;

D.H. Lawrence photo

“If we sip the wine, we find dreams coming upon us out of the imminent night”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave
Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

To Night http://www.readprint.com/work-1379/Percy-Bysshe-Shelley (1821), st. 1

Michael Oakeshott photo

“Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Novalis photo

“We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 16
Variant translations:
We dream of a journey through the universe. But is the universe then not in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Inward goes the secret path. Eternity with its worlds, the past and the future, is in us or nowhere.
As translated in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
We dream of journeys through the cosmos — Is the cosmos not then in us? We do not know the depths of our own spirit. — The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, is eternity with its worlds — the past and the future.
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

Related topics