Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/268

240 Blank faithlessness itself; bravely it holds

To duty unrewarded and unshared;

It loves where all is loveless; it endures

In the long passion of the soul for God.

'T was thus I thought:—

At last the very land whose breath he breathed,

The very hills his bruisèd feet did climb!

This is his Olivet; on this Mount he stood,

As I do now, and with this same surprise

Straight down into the startling blue he gazed

Of the fair, turquoise mid-sea of the plain.

That long, straight, misty, dream-like, violet wall

Of Moab—lo, how close it looms! The same

Quick human wonder struck his holy vision.

About these feet the flowers he knew so well.

Back where the city's shadow slowly climbs

There is a wood of olives gaunt and gray,

And centuries old; it holds the name it bore

That night of agony and bloody sweat.

I tell you when I looked upon these fields

And stony valleys,—through the purple veil

Of twilight, or what time the Orient sun

Made shining jewels of the barren rocks,—

Something within me trembled; for I said:

This picture once was mirrored in his eyes;

This sky, that lake, those hills, this loveliness,

To him familiar were; this is the way

To Bethany; the red anemones

Along yon wandering path mark the steep road

To green-embowered Jordan. All is his:

These leprous outcasts pleading piteously;

This troubled country,—troubled then as now,