Before the Gates of Machaerus

Welcome, O wilderness, and welcome, nightAnd solitude, and ye swift-flying starsThat drift with golden sands the barren heavens,Welcome once more! The Angels of the WindHasten across the desert to receive me;And sweeter than men's voices are to meThe voices of these solitudes; the soundOf unseen rivulets, and the far-off cryOf bitterns in the reeds of water-pools.And lo! above me, like the Prophet's arrowShot from the eastern window, high in airThe clamorous cranes go singing through the night.O ye mysterious pilgrims of the air,Would I had wings that I might follow you!

I look forth from these mountains, and beholdThe omnipotent and omnipresent night,Mysterious as the future and the fateThat hangs o'er all men's lives! I see beneath meThe desert stretching to the Dead Sea shore,And westward, faint and far away, the glimmerOf torches on Mount Olivet, announcingThe rising of the Moon of Passover.Like a great cross it seems, on which suspended,With head bowed down in agony, I seeA human figure! Hide, O merciful heaven,The awful apparition from my sight!

And thou, Machaerus, lifting high and blackThy dreadful walls against the rising moon,Haunted by demons and by apparitions,Lilith, and Jezerhara, and Bedargon,How grim thou showest in the uncertain light,A palace and a prison, where King HerodFeasts with Herodias, while the Baptist JohnFasts, and consumes his unavailing life!And in thy court-yard grows the untithed rue,Huge as the olives of Gethsemane,And ancient as the terebinth of Hebron,Coeval with the world. Would that its leavesMedicinal could purge thee of the demonsThat now possess thee, and the cunning foxThat burrows in thy walls, contriving mischief!

Angels of God! Sandalphon, thou that weavestThe prayers of men into immortal garlands,And thou, Metatron, who dost gather upTheir songs, and bear them to the gates of heaven,Now gather up together in your handsThe prayers that fill this prison, and the songsThat echo from the ceiling of this palace,And lay them side by side before God's feet!