Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Dulce domum!
DULCE DOMUM!
The fine old fragment, still used as a college chaunt, with the touching refrain of “Dulce, dulce, domum,” is attributed to a youth, who, on being separated from home, to which he was passionately attached, languished and died from the effects of the bereavement. The writer of the following lines has attempted a fuller interpretation of the spirit which pervades the old and almost forgotten lyric.
Ah! racked pine, on the granite steep,
Shadowy from each blowing wind,
And dashed with dusk from yonder cloud
With fires of fading sunset lined,
Within my brain your image lies,
Transformed; and looms upon mine eyes
A castle black against the skies.
Dulce, dulce domum.
Up many a terrace, gleaming white,
With fronts that glitter to the north;
High over leagues of vexèd sea,
And purple cliff and roaring forth,
It sitteth, like a house of rest,
One clot stain on the burning west;
Sun, moon, and mist its changing guest.
Dulce, dulce domum.
Within the circling garden walls,
The cedars brood above the flowers;
Across them shadows from the roofs
Slide bluely in the lighted hours.
I see my sister, cold and fair,
Shake in the sun her flaxen hair:
Would unto God that I were there.
Dulce, dulce domum.
Night, east and west: I hear a step,
Come, ghostlike, up the corridor;
I see the slender taper stream,
Between the chinks, across the floor.
O, mother mine, why turn away?
Fool to sit dreaming in the day.
Great God, her hair was thin and gray!
Dulce, dulce domum.
Where fliest thou, gaunt-plumed and swift,
Strong eagle, skirring past the stars?
Rush on and tell them that my heart
Is worn from beating at its bars.
Rush past o’er wastes of land and foam,
Thy fierce eyes cleave the dayless gloom,
Tell them I’m sick to death for home.
Dulce, dulce domum.
Ah, woe is me! The thoughts that sit
Beside me daily with the sun
Take shape and hue, and crowd my brain,
When wheels the bat in twilight dun.
I climb the terrace, o’er me flows
Their laughter, sucked through vine and rose;
Sudden, the terrace upward grows.
Dulce, dulce domum.
And, beaten down from steep to steep,
I see the dizzy walls leap higher;
The tender voices sink below
The first breath of an Easter choir.
Quick, startled by the night-guard’s tramp,
Upwards I throw hands, clenched and damp:
They strike the bracket of my lamp.
Dulce, dulce domum.
Fetch me a leaf of asphodel,
I long to feel it in my palm:
And, dying, tearful, hear without
The mournful Babylonian psalm.
While Israel, by the willows’ drowse,
Pined for her home, with ash-strewn brows,
And I pine for my father’s house.
Dulce, dulce domum.