Lean Over Me Poem by Digby Mackworth Dolben

O, a moon face
In a shadowy place.

Lean over me-ah so,-let fall
About my face and neck the shroud
That thrills me as a thunder-cloud
Full of strange lights, electrical.


Sweet moon, with pain and passion wan,
Rain from thy loneliness of light
The primal kisses of the night
Upon a new Endymion;


The boy who, wrapped from moil and moan,
With cheeks for ever round and fair,
Is dreaming of the nights that were
When lips immortal touched his own.


I marked an old man yesterday,
His body many-fingered grief
Distorted as a frozen leaf;
He fell, and cursed the rosy way.


O better than a century
Of heavy years that trail the feet,
More full of being, more complete
A stroke of time with youth and thee.