So many years your tomb the roses strew,
Yet not one penny wiser we than you,
The doubts that wearied you are with us still,
And, Heaven be thanked! your wine is with us too.

For, have the years a better message brought
To match the simple wisdom that you taught: 
  Love, wine and verse, and just a little bread—­
For these to live and count the rest as nought?

Therefore, Great Omar, here our homage deep
We drain to thee, though all too fast asleep
  In Death’s intoxication art thou sunk
To know the solemn revels that we keep.

Oh, had we, best-loved Poet, but the power
From our own lives to pluck one golden hour,
And give it unto thee in thy great need,
How would we welcome thee to this bright bower!

O life that is so warm, ’twas Omar’s too;
O wine that is so red, he drank of you: 
  Yet life and wine must all be put away,
And we go sleep with Omar—­yea, ’tis true.

And when in some great city yet to be
The sacred wine is spilt for you and me,
  To those great fames that we have yet to build,
We’ll know as little of it all as he.

THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION

Loud mockers in the roaring street
  Say Christ is crucified again: 
Twice pierced His gospel-bringing feet,
  Twice broken His great heart in vain.

I hear, and to myself I smile,
For Christ talks with me all the while.

No angel now to roll the stone
  From off His unawaking sleep,
In vain shall Mary watch alone,
  In vain the soldiers vigil keep.

Yet while they deem my Lord is dead
My eyes are on His shining head.

Ah! never more shall Mary hear
  That voice exceeding sweet and low
Within the garden calling clear: 
  Her Lord is gone, and she must go.

Yet all the while my Lord I meet
In every London lane and street.

Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain,
  And Bartimaeus still go blind;
The healing hem shall ne’er again
  Be touched by suffering humankind.

Yet all the while I see them rest,
The poor and outcast, in His breast.

No more unto the stubborn heart
  With gentle knocking shall He plead,
No more the mystic pity start,
  For Christ twice dead is dead indeed.

So in the street I hear men say,
Yet Christ is with me all the day.

AN IMPRESSION

The floating call of the cuckoo,
Soft little globes of bosom-shaped sound,
Came and went at the window;
And, out in the great green world,
Those maidens each morn the flowers
Opened their white little bodices wide to the sun: 
And the man sighed—­sighed—­in his sleep,
And the woman smiled.

Then a lark staggered singing by
Up his shining ladder of dew,
And the airs of dawn walked softly about the room,
Filling the morning sky with the scent of the woman’s hair,
And giving, in sweet exchange, its hawthorn and daisy breath: 
And the man awoke with a sob—­
But the woman dreamed.