Charlotte Mew

I Have Been Through the Gates

His heart to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers;
I saw it then as we see things in dreams,—I do not remember how long I slept;
I remember the tress, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the towers;
The walls are standing to-day, and the gates; I have been through the gates, I have groped, I have crept
Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood; they are empty; darkness is over them;
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly rain, unclean and unswept,
Like the heart of the holy city, old blind, beautiful Jerusalem;
        Over which Christ wept