Page:Chesterton - The Ballad of St. Barbara and other verses, 1922.djvu/9

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

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

vii