Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DUM AGONIZATUR ANIMA, ORENT ASSISTENTES; FRAGMENT, by DIGBY MACKWORTH DOLBEN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DUM AGONIZATUR ANIMA, ORENT ASSISTENTES; FRAGMENT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Behold me will-less, witless in the night
Last Line: And I will follow thee where'er thou goest.
Alternate Author Name(s): Dolben, Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth
Subject(s): Jesus Christ


Think, kind Fesu, my salvation
Caused Thy wondrous Incarnation,
Leave me not to reprobation.
Faint and weary Thou bast sought me,
On the Cross of anguish bought me;
Shall such grace be vainly brought me?

BEHOLD me will-less, witless in the night;
With hands that feel the illimitable dark
I walk, untouched, untouching; every face
Is senseless as a mask, save when I cry
'O little children turn away your eyes.' --
This for the day; but when the hush is spread
Wherein Thou givest Thy beloved sleep,
I call Thee to my witness -- though I sin,
I suffer: I confess, do all we can
Thou art not mocked, nor dost Thou mock at us.
Who laughs to scorn the anger of a babe?
Or who despises infants, if they play
At building houses? so we storm and toil,
And squander all our passion and our thought,
And Thou regardest not; for on us lies
The weight of everlasting nothingness.
War with the angels; neither war nor peace
With us, who flutter willing to our doom,
And need no sword to drive from Paradise.
See, I believe more fully than the Saint
Who trod the waters in the might of love.
See, I believe, and own him for the fool
Who saith 'there is no God', and therefore sins.
Believe -- what profit in it? I have loved: --
Ay, once I strained and stretched thro' haze of doubt
If haply I might catch with passionate hand
The garment-hem of Thee: I half believed,
But wholly loved; once (Thou rememberest) prayed,
'I love Thee, love Thee; only give me light,
And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest.'
'I will' I said and knew not; now I know
And will not, cannot will. . . . .
. . . . . . . .
What? Is a way cleft thro' the stony floors,
And dost Thou stand Thyself above the stair,
In Thine old sweetness and benignity,
Spreading Thy wounded hands, and saying 'Son,
Thou sinnest, I have suffered. Mount and see
The fulness of my Passion: though these steps
Be hard to flesh and blood, remember this,
That along all intolerable paths
The benediction of my feet hath passed. . .
. . . . . . . .,
To gentleness so inexpressible,
To love so far beyond imagining
I answer not; but in my soul fill up
The faint conception of the artist monk,
Who soared with Paul into the seventh heaven,
But could not paint the anger of the Lamb.
I seem to lie for ever in some porch,
While down the nave there creeps the awful dirge,
And writhes about the pillars -- whispering
The uttermost extremity of man:
Till the low music ceases; and a scream
Breaks shuddering from the choir, 'Let me not
Be burnt in fires undying.' * * *

* * * . . . .

* * * * * * *

And some are there unscathed of flame or sword, DOLBEN
Yet on their brows the seal of suffering,
And in their hands the rose of martyrdom,
(Have pity upon me, ye that were my friends)
With arms about each other, -- aureoles
That mingle into one triumphant star;
A fount of wonder in their pensive eyes,
Sprung from the thought that pain is consummate --
'To him that overcometh' -- half forgotten
The victory, so long the battle was,
Begun when manhood was a thing to be:
Not as they send the boyish sailor out,
A father's lingering hand amid his hair,
A mother's kisses warm upon his cheek,
And in his heart the unspoken consciousness
That though upon his grave no gentle fingers
Shall set the crocus, yet in the old home
There shall be aye a murmur of the sea,
A fair remembrance and a tender pride.
Not so for these the dawn of battle rose.

. . . . . . .

* * * * * * *

. . . . . . .

* * * * * * *

So one by one the knights were panoplied.
But now they enter in where never voice
Of clamorous Babylon shall vex them more,
To Syon the undivided, to the peace,
The given peace earth neither makes nor mars,
Beyond the angels, and the angels' Queen,
Beyond the avenues of saints, where rests,
Deep in the Beatifical Idea,
The sum of peace, the Human Heart of God.

* * * * * * *

Ah! whose is that red rose that only lies
Unclaimed * *
. . . . . . .
Five knots of snowdrops on the garden bank
Beneath the hill -- how satisfied they seem
Against the barren hedge, wherein by this
The pleasant saps and juices are astir
To work the greening snowdrops do not see.
I leaning from my window am in doubt
If summer brings a flower so loveable,
Of such a meditative restfulness
As this, with all her roses and carnations.
The morning hardly stirs their noiseless bells;
Yet could I fancy that they whispered 'Home',
For all things gentle all things beautiful
I hold, my mother, for a part of thee.

* * * * * * *

As watered grass beyond the glaring street,
As drop of evening on a fighting field,
As convent bells that chime for complin-tide
Heard in the gas-light of the theatre,
So unto me the image of a face,
A certain face that all the angels know.

* * * * * * *

Bright are the diadems of all pure loves,
But none so bright as that whereon are set
The mingled names of Father and of Mother.
Dear are true friends, and sweet is gratitude
For grateful deeds; but what the sum of all
To that perennial love we hardly thank
More than the sun for shining while 'tis day,
Or at the dusk the cheerful candlelight?

How wholly fair is all without my soul,
The evershifting lights upon the hills,
The eastern flush upon the beechen stems,
And the green network of ascending paths
Wherein again the spring shall bid us ride,
With all the blood aglow along our veins,
And every mountain be 'delectable',
And every plain a pleasant land of Beulah.

* * * * * * *

Suppose it but a fancy that it groaned,
This dear creation, -- rather let it sing
In an exuberance and excess of gladness.

* * * * * * *

Suppose a kindly mother-influence

* * * * * * *

And sin alone a transitory fever,
For which in some mysterious Avilon
Beyond the years, some consummate Hereafter,
A fount of healing springs for all alike.

. . . * * * *

No, Love! Love! Love! Thou knowest that I cannot,
I cannot live without Thee. Yet this way --
Is there no other road to Calvary
Than the one way of sorrows? * *

* * * * * * *

I thought I lay at home and watched the glow
The ruddy fire-light cast about my bed;
Upon me undefinable the sense
Of something dreadful, till I slept and dreamed.

THE DREAM

I stood amid the lights that never die,
The only stars the dawning passes by,
Beneath the whisper of the central dome
That holds and hides the mystic heart of Rome.

But in mine eyes the light of other times,
And in mine ears the sound of English chimes;
I smelled again the freshness of the morn,
The primal incense of the daisied lawn.

* * * *

* * * *

* * * I said

'And have I come so very far indeed?'

The everlasting murmur echoes 'Far
As from green earth is set the furthest star
Men have not named. A journey none retrace
Is thine, and steps the seas could not efface.'
'How cold and pitiless is the voice of Truth,'
I cried; 'Ah! who will give me my lost youth?
Ah! who restore the years the locust ate,
Hard to remember, harder to forget?'

* * * * * * *

* * * * * * *

A multitude of voices sweet and grave,
A long procession up the sounding nave.

'The Lion of the tribe of Judah, He
Has conquered, but in Wounds and Agony.
The ensign of His triumph is the Rood,
His royal robe is purple, but with Blood.

And we who follow in His Martyr-train
Have access only thro' the courts of pain.
Yet on the Via dolorosa He
Precedes us in His sweet humanity.

A Man shall be a covert from the heat,
Whereon in vain the sandy noon shall beat:
A Man shall be a perfect summer sun,
When all the western lights are paled and gone.

A Man shall be a Father, Brother, Spouse,
A land, a city and perpetual House:
A Man shall lift us to the Angels' shore:
A Man shall be our God for evermore.'

Christ, God, or rather JESU, it is true,
True the old story of Gethsemane.
Remember then the unfathomed agony
That touched upon the caverns of despair,
Whence never diver hath regain'd the sun. --
Thou knowest, but I know not; save me then
From beating the impenetrable rock.
By that Thine hour of weakness be my Strength,
And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net