Palestine
Reading edition
A league-long line of mountains:
Some fertile plains:
Bright, rippling, purling fountains,
After the rains.
Vast valleys, lorn and lonely;
Smiling and green:
Dead cities, telling only
What might have been.
A weary, stricken people,
So long enslaved;
A spire and broken steeple,
By lanes ill-paved:
A thousand superstitions;
A hundred creeds;
The beggars’ vain petitions
That no one heeds.
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MOSQUE OF OMAR
A field of poppies blazing:
Orchids new-born:
A wealth of flowers amazing
Fringing the corn:
A line of camels stringing
Across the brae:
The skylark sweetly singing,
To welcome day.
A home of races, mingled
Gentile and Jew:
Women with veilèd faces:
Rogues, not a few.
A Sacred Land, and Holy:
Beersheba to Dan;
Where once a King so lowly
Lived as a man.
A land of milk and honey,
In Moses’ day:
A place of paper money
Since Abdul’s sway:
A prophets’ land and sages’,
By right divine:
The heir of all the Ages,
Poor Palestine!!
“TROOPER BLUEGUM.”
SOME SOUVENIR (AN AUSTRALIAN TROOPER WITH GERMAN HELMET) By James McBey. British Official Artist
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