"The Rock" In El Ghor

Dead Petra in her hill-tomb sleeps,     Her stones of emptiness remain;     Around her sculptured mystery sweeps     The lonely waste of Edom's plain.     From the doomed dwellers in the cleft     The bow of vengeance turns not back;     Of all her myriads none are left     Along the Wady Mousa's track.     Clear in the hot Arabian day     Her arches spring, her statues climb;     Unchanged, the graven wonders pay     No tribute to the spoiler, Time!     Unchanged the awful lithograph     Of power and glory undertrod;     Of nations scattered like the chaff     Blown from the threshing-floor of God.     Yet shall the thoughtful stranger turn     From Petra's gates with deeper awe,     To mark afar the burial urn     Of Aaron on the cliffs of Hor;     And where upon its ancient guard     Thy Rock, El Ghor, is standing yet,     Looks from its turrets desertward,     And keeps the watch that God has set.     The same as when in thunders loud     It heard the voice of God to man,     As when it saw in fire and cloud     The angels walk in Israel's van,     Or when from Ezion-Geber's way     It saw the long procession file,     And heard the Hebrew timbrels play     The music of the lordly Nile;     Or saw the tabernacle pause,     Cloud-bound, by Kadesh Barnea's wells,     While Moses graved the sacred laws,     And Aaron swung his golden bells.     Rock of the desert, prophet-sung!     How grew its shadowing pile at length,     A symbol, in the Hebrew tongue,     Of God's eternal love and strength.     On lip of bard and scroll of seer,     From age to age went down the name,     Until the Shiloh's promised year,     And Christ, the Rock of Ages, came!     The path of life we walk to-day     Is strange as that the Hebrews trod;     We need the shadowing rock, as they,     We need, like them, the guides of God.     God send His angels, Cloud and Fire,     To lead us o'er the desert sand!     God give our hearts their long desire,     His shadow in a weary land