Can we have a clue? I have a cup of tea balaced in one hand and I’ve already tried to cheat by right clicking to no avail….

I made it cheat-proof…

He was from Liverpool but made his name (such as it was) in London.

Is it Swinburne?

Puss

No. Much more minor than Swinburne. Also younger.

Hmmm, minor nineteenth-century poets are not my forte. Now give me a minor eighteenth-century poet and I’d be laughing.

Puss

It’s Richard le Gallienne. (I hope that’s spelled correctly).

“First drink the stars, then grunt amid the mire”.

Personally I find absinth and Red Bull to be a better sharpener when grunting amid the mire, but there you go.

And what do you know? He bears an uncanny resemblance to Bradley Whitford (aka Josh from the West Wing).

Perhaps Aaron Sorkin could turn his attention to the fin de siecle for his next TV drama.

Yes, it’s le Gallienne alright. He of the bouffant hair and Yellow Book poems.

This is him singing about Edgar Allan Poe and topless heaven:

Poet of doom, dementia, and death,
Of beauty singing in a charnel house,
Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,
With too much loving of some lord of hell;
Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what shore
Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed,
Or to what spectral star of topless heaven
Art lifted and enthroned?

Well done all…

And yes, I see the resemblance to Bradley Whitford, but I think it’s just a trick of this particular photo. I can’t see it here at all.

“Topless heaven” sounds like an establishment one would find in Las Vegas.

Come to think of it
Poet of doom, dementia, and death,
Of beauty singing in a charnel house,
Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,
With too much loving of some lord of hell;

Probably applies to half the strippers there. That’s decadence for you.

I am sooo jealous. None of my readers do absinthe with or without Red Bull… (wistful sigh).

Hi Quinkie

Congratulations to Bill. I would never have got that one. Hugs to baby Quink.

xxx

Pants

Dear Shaigetz, old beaver hat, you are, as it happens, completely mistaken.

Shaigetz. Black-hatted one. I am going to open a replica of the old Café Royal on the Hill. If you two are anything to go by, business will be brisk…

Great! I am looking forward to treating you to a Death in the Afternoon among the all the Men in Black who will no doubt be crowding the place out.

That was quite impressive, Bill.

Tsk, Bill. Not all strippers are moon-mad.

Puss

Late as usual. No EDW again at my place this week, Quink, very sorry. This is a very wonderful photo and I’d never have got it. (And btw, your Dowson effort was much appreciated the other week.)

Shaigetz, we all read you! Therefore your readers are a very cosmopolitan bunch (though I confess I have never had either absinthe or Red Bull). We should probably try to keep Baby Quink on the straight and narrow for the moment, though.

i’m late too - but i never would have got it in a million years - i thought he looked french and would have gone down the verlaine/baudelaire route (from which few return)

Strangely, rivergirlie, that’s exactly what’s wrong with le G as a poet. Trying way too hard to be Baudelaire. The bit quoted above reads like it’s a translation. The reference to Poe (greatly admired by Baudelaire, and translated brilliantly by him) is also a bit of a giveaway.