One of his uncles, Lord James Douglas, was deeply attached to his twin sister 'Florrie' and was heartbroken when she married. In 1862, his widowed grandmother, Lady Queensberry, converted to Roman Catholicism and took her children to live in Paris.Īpart from the violent death of his grandfather, there were other tragedies in Douglas's family. In 1860, Douglas's grandfather, the 8th Marquess of Queensberry, had died in what was reported as a shooting accident, but his death was widely believed to have been suicide. In 1893, Douglas had a brief affair with George Ives. Their relationship had always been a strained one and during the Queensberry-Wilde feud, Douglas sided with Wilde, even encouraging him to prosecute his own father for libel. At Oxford, Douglas edited an undergraduate journal The Spirit Lamp (1892-3), an activity that intensified the constant conflict between him and his father. He was his mother's favourite child she called him Bosie (a derivative of Boysie), a nickname which stuck for the rest of his life.ĭouglas was educated at Winchester College (1884–88) and at Magdalen College, Oxford (1889–93), which he left without obtaining a degree. The third son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry and his first wife, Sibyl née Montgomery, Douglas was born at Ham Hill House in Worcestershire. Much of his early poetry was Uranian in theme, though he tended, later in life, to distance himself from both Wilde's influence and his own role as a Uranian poet. Their music to the moon.Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), nicknamed Bosie, was a British author, poet and translator, better known as the intimate friend and lover of the writer Oscar Wilde. Of birds at noon-day, and no soft throats yield I know a green grass path that leaves the field, This is the joy that fills a cloudy night Of every flower that blows in every Spring, To fight with form, to wrestle and to rage, To eat sweet honey and to taste black gall, Wherein to keep wild thoughts like birds in thrall To find some cloistered place, some hermitage Out of forgotten depths, they rise and shine Hide in the soul their constant quenchless light, Think how the hidden things that poets see More than the languors of soft lute-playing. Of silver flutes and mouths made round to sing.Īlong the wall red roses climb and cling,Īnd oh! my prince, lift up thy countenance,įor there be thoughts like roses that entrance What shall we do, my soul, to please the King? Men creep like thoughts.The lamps are like pale flowers. I think they move! I hear her panting breath.Īnd that's her head where the tiara rests.Īnd in her brain, through lanes as dark as death, Pricked out with lamps they stand like huge black towers. That's the great town at night: I see her breasts, With thousands of bold eyes to heaven, and dares See! that huge circle like a necklace, stares Once, and once only, might have stood with these. When you met mercy's voice with frowns or jeers.Īnd did you ask who signed the plea with you?įools! It was signed already with the sign That you yourselves, not he, were pitiable You that were full of fears,Īnd mean self-love, shall live to know full well Of song and art is powerless as the tears Opened for Tracian Orpheus, now the spell Zola, Copee, Sardou and others) who refused to compromise their spotless reputations or imperil their literary exclusiveness by signing a merciful petition in favour of Oscar Wilde.Ĭan open English prisons. "Not all the singers of a thousand years" Sonnet, dedicated to those French men of letters (Messrs. (Compare Keats's sonnet When I Have Fears.) Till mean things put on beauty like a dressĪnd all the world was an enchanted place.Īnd then methought outside a fast locked gateĪnd voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds. I heard his golden voice and marked him trace I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face "Not all the singers of a thousand years".(From Modern British Poetry by Louis Untermeyer.) The City of the Soul (1899) and Sonnets (1900) contain his most graceful writing. One of the minor poets of "the eighteen-nineties," several of his poems rise above his own affectations and the end-of-the-century decadence. He was the editor of The Academy from 1907 to 1910 and was at one time the intimate friend of Oscar Wilde. Lord Alfred Douglas was born in 1870 and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. Lord Alfred Douglas Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945)
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