Poems (Kennedy)/That Middle Cross

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy

THAT MIDDLE CROSS ON CALVARY

IT still is there, though time has run
 From century to century—
That milestone of the flying years—
 That lowly Mount of Calvary.

Dead empires with their weedy crowns
 Have crumbled into voiceless dust,
And scepters that once ruled the world
 Are heaps of brown corroding rust;

In Egypt Memnon sings no more—
 We only guess the sun-waked tones;
We tread on buried Babylon,
 And seek in vain Palmyra's stones;

The clustered domes of Nineveh
 Are shards upon the desert sand,
And Troy and all her mighty hosts
 Are legends of an unknown land.

But—unforgotten through the drift
 Of ages dim with mystery,
That lowly Mountain keeps the trail
 That leads to Immortality.

The cities that we know today
 May sink beneath the sands of time,
The history which now we write
 Some day may be forgotten rhyme.

But that low Mount will still abide;
 The hearts of men will not forget—
High altar of a ransomed world
 Where tapers of our faith are set.

They'll shine, those holy altar lights,
 And by their steadfast gleams we'll see—
Through war and peace and life and death—
 That middle cross on Calvary.