Clarel/Part 1/Canto 26

26. The Gate of Zion
As Clarel entered with the guide, Beset they were by that sad crew-- With inarticulate clamor plied; And faces, yet defacements too, Appealed to them; but could not give Expression. There, still sensitive, Our human nature, deep inurned In voiceless visagelessness, yearned. Behold, proud worm (if such can be), What yet may come, yea, even to thee. Who knoweth? canst forecast the fate In infinite ages? Probe thy state: Sinless art thou? Then these sinned not. These, these are men; and thou art--what? For Clarel, turning in affright, Fain would his eyes renounce the light. But Nehemiah held on his path Mild and unmoved--scarce seemed to heed The suitors, or deplore the scath-- His soul pre-occupied and freed From actual objects thro' the sway Of visionary scenes intense-- The wonders of a mystic day And Zion's old magnificence. Nor hither had he come to show The leper-huts, but only so To visit once again the hill And gate Davidic. In ascent They win the port's high battlement,

And thence in sweep they view at will That theatre of heights which hold As in a Coliseum's fold They guarded Zion. They command The Mount of Solomon's Offense, The Crag of Evil Council, and Iscariot's gallows-eminence. Pit too they mark where long ago Dull fires of refuse, shot below, The city's litter, smouldering burned, Clouding the glen with smoke impure, And griming the foul shapes obscure Of dismal chain-gangs in their shame Raking the garbage thither spurned: Tophet the place--transferred, in name, To penal Hell. But shows there naught To win here a redeeming thought? Yes: welcome in its nearer seat The white Caenaculum they greet, Where still an upper room is shown-- In dream avouched the very one Wherein the Supper first was made And Christ those words of parting said, Those words of love by loved St. John So tenderly recorded. Ah,

They be above us like a star, Those Paschal words. But they descend; And as within the wall they wend, A Horror hobbling on low crutch Draws near, but still refrains from touch. Before the saint in low estate He fawns, who with considerate Mild glance regards him. Clarel shrank: And he, is he of human rank?-- "Knowest thou him?" he asked.--"Yea, yea, And beamed on that disfeatured clay: "Toulib, to me? to Him are due

These thanks--the God of me and you And all; to whom His own shall go In Paradise and be re-clad, Transfigured like the morning glad.-- Yea, friend in Christ, this man I know, This fellow-man."--And afterward The student from true sources heard How Nehemiah had proved his friend, Sole friend even of that trunk of woe, When sisters failed him in the end.