To F. C. In Memoriam Palestine, '19

Do you remember one immortalLost moment out of time and space,What time we thought, who passed the portalOf that divine disastrous placeWhere Life was slain and Truth was slanderedOn that one holier hill than Rome,How far abroad our bodies wanderedThat evening when our souls came home?

The mystic city many-gated,With monstrous columns, was your own:Herodian stones fell down and waitedTwo thousand years to be your throne.In the grey rocks the burning blossomGlowed terrible as the sacred blood:It was no stranger to your bosomThan bluebells of an English wood.

Do you remember a road that followsThe way of unforgotten feet.Where from the waste of rocks and hollowsClimb up the crawling crooked street

The stages of one towering dramaAlways ahead and out of sight . . .Do you remember AceldamaAnd the jackal barking in the night?

Life is not void or stuff for scorners:We have laughed loud and kept our love,We have heard singers in tavern cornersAnd not forgotten the birds above:We have known smiters and sons of thunderAnd not unworthily walked with them,We have grown wiser and lost not wonder;And we have seen Jerusalem.