At Samaria

WE climbed the hill where from Samaria’s crown

In marble majesty once looked away

Toward Hermon, white beneath the Syrian day;

And lo, no vestige of the old renown.

Save a long colonnade bescarred and brown,

Remained to tell of Herod’s regal sway,

The gold, the gauds, the imperial display,

He heaped on Judah’s erewhile princely town.

Ruin was riotous; decay was king;

An olive-root engript the topmost stone;

As tho it clutched and crusht the thing called fame;

Seemed as a fragile wind-flower petal blown

Into the void, the past’s vain glorying,

And Herod but the shadow of a name!