Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The mitre's fallen from the brow
Of Judah's holy hierarch,
The fires of heaven no longer glow,
And cincture glory's sacred ark;
The olive circled cherubim
With halcyon mercy no more reign,
Nor Moriah's turrets gleam
O'er heaven-girt Palestine's domain.

Here Desolation builds his dome,
And bitterns shriek his vigil song,
And pelicans mid ruins roam,
And willows moan the dales along;
Amidst the rich and columned halls
The noiseless spider weaves his woof,
And brambles wave along the walls,
And vipers throng the vaulted roof.

The heaven-descended Shiloh came,
Not in the warrior's sheeny car,
Nor 'mid the glory-circling flame,
With wrath his herald through the war;
Nor jewelled crown of bright dominion
Glowed on his brow irradiate!
He rode not on the eagle's pinion,
Lord of battle and of fate.

But, a virgin bore the smiling child,
And his palace was a manger,
His airy walks the desert wild,
And, on earth, he was a stranger;
His aulic throne, the storm-lashed mountain,
His royal banquet nature's store,
His glowing nectar the lone fountain,
And his tomb the voiceless shore.

He came .... and bowed his crownless head,
That wore, ere time to being sprang,
The diadem, whose radiance shed
Glory, and heaven illumed, when rang
The golden wires of countless choirs,
And uncreated piles of light
Were the abode of Calvary's God,
And angels, veiled, beheld the sight.

Again, round Salem glory beams,
From heaven descends her hierarch,
And ev'ry mausoleum gleams,
And a halo lingers round the ark;—

O haunted, holy, Palestine,
All—all thy scenes are consecrate,—
Thy King, thy God, thy Priest divine
Thy towerless fane will renovate.