Digby Mackworth Dolben: A Song

The world is young today:
Forget the gods are old,
Forget the years of gold
When all the months were May.

A little flower of Love
Is ours, without a root,
Without the end of fruit,
Yet – take the scent thereof.

There may be hope above,
There may be rest beneath;
We see them not, but Death
Is palpable – and Love.

—

Digby Augustus Stewart Mackworth Dolben (1848 – 1867) was an English poet who died young from drowning. He owes his poetic reputation to his cousin, Robert Bridges, British Poet Laureate from 1913 to 1930, who edited a partial edition of his verse, Poems, in 1911. Currently, no collections of Dolben’s poems are in print.

Dolben as pictured in the frontispiece to The Poems of Digby Mackworth Dolben (1915).