On this day in 1813 Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice was published. Like all her work, it was read aloud to her family most evenings as she was writing it. The themes of all Jane’s writing are morality, respectability and the need for young women to find husbands. Though she died two years after the Battle of Waterloo, her characters seemed blissfully unaware of the upheavals and carnage going on in Europe at the time.

Today’s poem, by Ernest Dowson, is about a special kind of faithfulness – Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae:

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! Thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion.
I have forgot much, Cynara! Gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind,
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! In my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! The night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee Cynara! In my fashion.

Today I give thanks for the virtues of faithfulness and loyalty that mean so much as we grow older and wiser.