"But all that now is over. Dreamers of dreams shall not in me discover Fallen remembrances of Holy Land; Looks in mine eyes, that seem to understand A banished secret; in my common mien, A charmed communion with high things unseen For all that now is over. Mere merchant of earth's market-place, no lover, I keep the dusty, trodden road of all. Though broken echoes fill the mart,"
"The work of Lionel Johnson (1867-1902), the English poet and essayist, was much admired by, and a formative influence on, his friend WB Yeats. His poems are shaped by his classicism, his consciousness of his Welsh ancestry and a sense of strong personal affiliation with Ireland. Johnson was a member of Yeats's Rhymers' Club, and is associated with the Decadent movement of the 1890s. Renegade is one of his faultless pieces of lyric verse."
"Its three six-lined, beautifully cadenced stanzas are linked by a nuanced refrain, each time beginning with a different conjunction. The avoidance of closure at the end of the first verse is especially notable, thanks to the connective first word of the new stanza's first line, For all that now is over. The pararhyme in each stanza's opening lines (over / discover; over / lover; over / recover) asserts the certainty of the loss of all that, and that an ineradicable echo or shadow remains."
A speaker accepts the end of spiritual and ideal aspirations while retaining vivid memories. Three six-line stanzas employ a nuanced refrain that recurs with different conjunctions to bind past and present. Musical cadence and pararhyme reinforce the sense of abdication and an ineradicable echo that lingers. Imagery shifts between sacred longings — Holy Land, banished secret, charmed communion — and mundane roles — merchant, market-place, dusty road — to dramatize a fallen ideal replaced by dull duty and unacknowledged love. The overall tone is resigned, elegiac, and quietly luminous.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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