The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben :: :: University of Virginia Library

And yet why strive to syllable my loss
In chilly metaphors of night and sleep?
Leap in, O Love, O Flame divine, yea leap
Upon them, shrivel them like paper; so,
In that refining fire, the encircling dross
Of words shall melt away; then will I keep,
Stored in a silent Treasury I know,
The pure reality, that in the spring—
The resurrection of all loveliness—
For me a star shall pierce the eastern cloud,
And western breezes bear the tender rain;
For me a crocus flower shall burst its shroud,
My Love, my buried Love, shall rise again.

Blow, winds, and make the fields a wilderness;
Roar, hurrying rivers to the weary sea;
Fall, cruel veils of snow, as desolate
As human hearts, when passion fires have burnt
To greyest ash;—I shall nor hear nor see.

Within that Treasure-house of mine I wait,
I wait, with Erôs glowing at my side,
From him, the mighty artist, I have learned
How memories to brushes may be tied;

And tho' I moistened all my paints with tears,
Yet on my walls as joyous imagery,
With golden hopes inframèd, now appears
As e'er of old was dreamed to vivify
Ionian porticoes, when Greece was young,
And wreathed with glancing vine Anacreon sung.
Here, on the granite headland he is set,
Like Michael in his triumph, and the waves
In wild desire have tossed about his feet
Their choicest pearls;—and, here, he softly laves
Limbs delicate, where beechen boughs are wet
With jewelled drops and all is young and sweet;—
And here, a stranded lily on the beach,
My Hylas, coronalled with curly gold,
He lies beyond the water's longing reach
Him once again essaying to enfold;—
Here, face uplifted to the twinkling sky
He walks, like Agathôn the vastly-loved,
Till with the dear Athenian I cry,
‘My Star of stars, would I might heaven be,
Night-long, with many eyes, to gaze on thee!’—
And here, like Hyacinthus, as he moved
Among the flowers, ere flower-like he sank
Too soon to fade on green Eurotas' bank.

But it is profanation now to speak
Of thoughtless Hellene boys, or to compare
The majesty and spiritual grace
Of that design which consummates the whole.
It is himself, as I have watched him, where
The mighty organ's great Teutonic soul
Passed into him and lightened in his face,
And throbbed in every nerve and fired his cheek.

See, Love, I sing not of thee now alone,
But am become a painter all thine own.