I wrenched and wrestled to believe that God had sent us here to grieve Our bodies with this fruitlessness, that only fakirs could achieve His purpose. Then in blind revolt my soul like an unbroken colt Ran round and round an empty field. The hedge was thick. I could not bolt, Though one poor knight on stiffened knee revealed beneath his breath to me His thoughts on women while the monks recited magic formulæ. I sought for solace in renown. Men watched me swagger through the town The youngest knight in Christendom. When women passed I tried to frown. A year I suffered in this way before the wreck of our array Would undertake the final march. My soul was saved by movement. May Was with us, when my tutor closed his wintry Juvenal and posed Mid nightingales to quote and kiss the _Pervigilium Veneris_. I drove his authors from my head, and read Augustin hard instead; But sap was mounting in my veins and western groves where finches wed. To these no sound of sapphire seas, no stunted firs of Lebanon, Not Tyrian dyes nor Tripoli's loud yellows deafened. We ran on Through landmarks famed in Holy Writ, Emmaus, Bethlehem ... at last We saw the walls of Zion lit blood-red by sunset and the past. The conquest of another world unfurled beneath our feet, the land Of miracle and mystery lay as a bauble in our hand. Men flung their caps up, feigned a swoon. With prostrate lines of us the moon Drew silver circles round the site. A cock crowed--many hours too soon. We thought to prise the gates ajar. My tutor wrote their private Lar Or else--with Tacitus--their folk designed them for eternal war. The moat was wide; we feebly tried to stop its gape with pebbles, cried "Fall, Jericho!" The blessèd wall stood firm; but Christ was on our side. The Church had saved Him from His wan repute and thrust Him in our van, Bronzed, scarred. Alas, the first crusade had made Him out a fighting man! He taught the Turks to mock Giaours!... sent timely Genoese to build Wheeled wooden turrets. These we filled brimful. Jerusalem was ours.