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Two Cities
SIDE by side rise the two great cities, | |
| Afar on the traveller’s sight; | |
| One, black with the dust of labor, | |
| One, solemnly still and white. | |
| Apart, and yet together, | 5 |
| They are reached in a dying breath, | |
| But a river flows between them, | |
| And the river’s name is—Death. | |
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| Apart, and yet together, | |
| Together, and yet apart, | 10 |
| As the child may die at midnight | |
| On the mother’s living heart. | |
| So close come the two great cities, | |
| With only the river between; | |
| And the grass in the one is trampled, | 15 |
| But the grass in the other is green. | |
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| The hills with uncovered foreheads, | |
| Like the disciples meet, | |
| While ever the flowing water | |
| Is washing their hallowed feet. | 20 |
| And out on the glassy ocean, | |
| The sails in the golden gloom | |
| Seem to me but moving shadows | |
| Of the white emmarbled tomb. | |
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| Anon, from the hut and the palace | 25 |
| Anon, from early till late, | |
| They come, rich and poor together, | |
| Asking alms at thy Beautiful Gate. | |
| And never had life a guerdon | |
| So welcome to all to give, | 30 |
| In the land where the living are dying, | |
| As the land where the dead may live. | |
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| O silent City of Refuge | |
| On the way to the City o’erhead! | |
| The gleam of thy marble milestones | 35 |
| Tells the distance we are from the dead. | |
| Full of feet, but a city untrodden, | |
| Full of hands, but a city unbuilt, | |
| Full of strangers who know not even | |
| That their life-cup lies there spilt. | 40 |
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| They know not the tomb from the palace, | |
| They dream not they ever have died: | |
| God be thanked they never will know it | |
| Till they live on the other side! | |
| From the doors that death shut coldly | 45 |
| On the face of their last lone woe: | |
| They came to thy glades for shelter | |
| Who had nowhere else to go. | |
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