We toast with bitter dregs, to our emptiness

Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) Dregs

'The fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,

(This is the end of every song man sings!)

The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,

Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;

And health and hope have gone the way of love

Into the drear oblivion of lost things.

Ghosts go along with us until the end;

This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.

With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait

For the dropped curtain and the closing gate:

This is the end of all the songs man sings.'