ArtMagick Illustrated Poetry Collection
Wilfred Scawen Blunt
To One Whom He Dared Not Love
Year written: 1880
From 'The Love Sonnets of Proteus', 1880.
As one who, in a desert wandering
Alone and faint beneath a pitiless sky,
And doubting in his heart if he shall bring
His bones back to his kindred or there die,
Finds at his feet a treasure suddenly
Such as would make him for all time a king,
And so forgets his fears and with keen eye
Falls to a-counting each new precious thing,--
--So was I when you told me yesterday
The tale of your dear love. Awhile I stood
Astonished and enraptured, and my heart
Began to count its treasures. Now dismay
Steals back my joy, and terror chills my blood,
And I remember only "we must part."
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