Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, QUIS DESIDERIO, by THOMAS WALSH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

QUIS DESIDERIO, by                    
First Line: Dark and vast are thine outer walls, / o king of light!
Last Line: She of the silvered, even-parted hair!
Alternate Author Name(s): Gill, Roderick; Strange, Garrett
Subject(s): Love - Loss Of


DARK and vast are Thine outer walls,
O King of Light!
Weary the desert, lo, the parched wind crawls
Toward the pools of night.
Over Thy close there is music stealing.
Is it Thy revel, Lord, or the calls
Of my childhood's dreaming? Is it the pealing
Of angel spires, or the fever's blight?

Some rose immortal there must bloom
By fountains clear,
That waves of such ineffable perfume
Should reach me here!
Cool on my brows I feel their sprinkle,
Here in the dusk of my outer gloom
Where the stars themselves seem drops that twinkle
In truant spray o'er the sky wastes sheer.

Their hyssop melts through my soul. Perchance
She scatters there
Some old love-sign, some token,—she, whose glance
Makes consecrate and rare
Life's dawns and twilights,—whose worn hands inploring
Are constant raised 'mid all Thy joys' expanse
For me remembered still in her adoring,—
She of the silvered, even-parted hair!





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