Poems (Kennedy)/Allenby
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 fiefTill out of the mists of the morning Came the spears of the Moslem chiefAnd 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 spearsOf 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 throngIs Allenby's greeting of glory From David's harp of song!