‘Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam’ is a deeply poignant poem about life’s ineluctable capacity for change. One that — as the full Latin title suggests — prevents mortals like us from knowing with certainty what awaits us in life. Ernest Dowson understood this perhaps just as well as anyone acquainted with personal tragedies. The poem’s words are less a guide or consolation than a lucid statement of fact made by the speaker.
They assert drearily that we exist only briefly, spending our lives clinging to moments of joy too quick to end and sheltering ourselves from times of anguish too suddenly received. Death ends all significant memory and charged emotions.
Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam Ernest DowsonThey are not long, the weeping and the laughter,Love and desire and hate:I think they have no portion in us afterWe pass the gate.They are not long, the days of wine and roses:Out of a misty dreamOur path emerges for a while, then closesWithin a dream.
Summary
‘Vitae Summa Brevis’ by Ernest Dowson is a beautiful poem about the bittersweet briefness of both human emotion and life’s joys.
‘Vitae Summa Brevis’ begins with the speaker asserting that all emotions — ” the weeping and the laughter, / Love and desire and hate” — is but briefly experienced and felt. Lasting only as long as the person who is influenced by them is alive. Once “we pass the gate,” they stop being a part of who we are.
In the second stanza, the speaker continues to comment on the all-encompassing brevity that defines our lives. They remark that all of life’s happiest moments — “the days of wine and roses,” they call them — are far too short. Ultimately, our lives resemble a path that emerges from a “misty dream.” We stumble down it for a short while before it closes, ending our part in the dream.
Structure and Form
‘Vitae Summa Brevis’ is comprised of two quatrains with a rhyme scheme of ‘ABAB CDCD’. Dowson utilizes a variety of different meters within the poem: the first and third lines of both stanzas are composed in iambic pentameter, the second lines are written in iambic trimester, and the fourth lines are an example of iambic diameter.
Literary Devices
‘Vitae Summa Brevis’ contains examples of the following literary devices:
- Auditory Imagery: “the weeping and the laughter” (1).
- Visual Imagery: “misty dream” (6); “Our path emerges” (7).
- Metaphor: “after / We pass the gate” (3-4); “the days of wine and roses” (5); “Out of a misty dream / Our path emerges for a while, then closes” (6-7).
- Diacope: “Love and desire and hate” (8)
Detailed Analysis
Stanza One
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
The first stanza of ‘Vitae Summa Brevis’ opens with the speaker declaring that the things we feel, no matter how intense, do not last very long in the grand scheme of things. Dowson uses the auditory image of “weeping and…laughter” (1) to underscore that everything from sorrow to joy eventually fades. All our “love and desire and hate” (2) vanish the moment we die — or “pass the gate” (4).
Their words underscore the bittersweetness of such transience. Inspiring comfort in the knowledge that misery is only temporary but also melancholy since the same holds true for moments of happiness.
Stanza Two
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.
In the second stanza of ‘Vitae Summa Brevis, ‘ the speaker refers to these blissful and peaceful moments of life as “the days of wine and roses” (5). Like all things in life, these splendid periods do not last half as long as we would like — the implication being that we should enjoy them while we can.
Dowson then uses an extended metaphor to describe all of existence as a dream and our lives but a path that “emerges for a while, then closes” (6-7). The visual imagery of this “misty dream” (6) accentuates the often surreal and esoteric experience of being alive. Each of our lives appears then recede back into the mist of this reality we find ourselves born into.
In other words, life can often appear as this incomprehensible enigma we’re expected to unriddle before we die. Yet whatever answers or knowledge we might stumble upon are just as temporary and vaporous as the emotions we experience in the course of being alive. These things are not meaningless — but they are just as fleeting as we are. When our path in the dream closes it takes with it all that was pleasurable within life. Dowson’s poem seeks to remind us that the one immutable quality of life is its mutability.
FAQs
The poem’s theme is that the only thing certain about life is its inevitable brevity. Nothing good or bad lasts for very long, and stasis is not a permanent state. All things are doomed to fade while understanding the mystery of fate’s fickleness is a rare enough revelation.
Dowson poems often reckon with life’s relentlessly sudden sorrows, from personal tragedies to instances of unrequited love. He himself was no stranger to such anguishes of the heart: both his parents died of suicide. As a result, it’s not hard to imagine this poem as a bittersweet reminder of the ways in which life could take a turn for the worse.
The poem’s title comes from a line written by the Roman poet Horace. A literal translation from Latin to English would be: “Life’s Supreme Shortness of Hope Forbids Us to Begin Long.” The poem comes with an epitaph that summarizes the quote as well: “The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long.”
The wine symbolizes revelry and pleasure, while the rose symbolizes radiant life and passion.
Similar Poems
- ‘Tears Fall in My Heart’ by Paul Verlaine – this poem is another great example of Decadent poetry, one that explores heartache.
- ‘The Garden of Eros’ by Oscar Wilde – this poem revels in the beautiful outdoor surroundings its speaker finds themselves lounging in.
- ‘Be Drunk’ by Charles Baudelaire – this poem embraces life’s relentless capacity for anguish and rallies against it.
