Poems (Kennedy)/Allenby

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy

ALLENBY

(JERUSALEM, 1917)

HUSH! over the City of David
 A silence seems to fall,
And down the long sealed ages
 There comes a far, clear call:
"ALLENBY, conqueror, hero!"
 He comes in Christian state;
Uncovered and reverend, he enters
 Through the Holy City's gate.

Never a cannon has thundered
 'Gainst the haunts that men revere—
The Sepulchre, hallowed and holy,
 Golgotha, Gethsemane drear;
He has won them, this new crusader,
 With never a battle scar,
And he sets in the place of the crescent
 The Christian's risen Star.

And high on the heights of the eons
 There watches a serried host—
Those who conquered the city
 Far back in the ages lost.
There Shishak of Egypt frowns darkly
 To see where his warriors trod,
And Nebuchadnezzar remembers
 How he pillaged the City of God.

There are Persian and Greek and Roman
 Who held Jerusalem fief
Till out of the mists of the morning
 Came the spears of the Moslem chief
And Omar was lord and ruler.
 Then the red Crusaders came,
And Godfrey de Bouillon lifted
 The city's Mohammedan shame.

But there in the shadow behind him
 Stands Sal-adin, robed in state,
And he scowls at the modern Moslem
 Who yielded the city's gate.
And so on the heights of the eons
 Are gathered the clustered spears
Of the long procession of captors
 Gone down with the vanished years.

And over the City of Jesus
 That silence seems to fall,
For never a pagan captor
 Cheers with a ghastly call;
But surely that faint, weird music
 Stirring the city's vast throng
Is Allenby's greeting of glory
 From David's harp of song!