To F. C. In Memoriam Palestine, '19

Do you remember one immortal             Lost moment out of time and space,             What time we thought, who passed the portal             Of that divine disastrous place             Where Life was slain and Truth was slandered             On that one holier hill than Rome,             How far abroad our bodies wandered             That evening when our souls came home?             The mystic city many-gated,             With monstrous columns, was your own:             Herodian stones fell down and waited             Two thousand years to be your throne.             In the grey rocks the burning blossom             Glowed terrible as the sacred blood:             It was no stranger to your bosom             Than bluebells of an English wood.             Do you remember a road that follows             The way of unforgotten feet,             Where from the waste of rocks and hollows             Climb up the crawling crooked street             The stages of one towering drama             Always ahead and out of sight ...             Do you remember Aceldama             And 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 corners             And not forgotten the birds above:             We have known smiters and sons of thunder             And not unworthily walked with them,             We have grown wiser and lost not wonder;             And we have seen Jerusalem.