“Then came a morn in spring, and the cheerful sun Whitened the city and the hills around, And every mountain-road that clambered them, Tincturing the greyness of the olives warm, And the rank cacti round the valley’s sides. The day was one whereon death-penalties Were put in force, and here and there were set The soldiery for order, as I said, Since one of the condemned had raised some heat, And crowds surged passionately to see him slain. I, mounted on a Cappadocian horse, With some half-company of auxiliaries, Had captained the procession through the streets When it came streaming from the judgment-hall After the verdicts of the Governor. It drew to the great gate of the northern way That bears towards Damascus; and to a knoll Upon the common, just beyond the walls— Whence could be swept a wide horizon round Over the housetops to the remotest heights. Here was the public execution-ground For city crimes, called then and doubtless now Golgotha, Kranion, or Calvaria. “The usual dooms were duly meted out; Some three or four were stript, transfixed, and nailed, And no great stir occurred. A day of wont It was to me, so far, and would have slid Clean from my memory at its squalid close But for an incident that followed these. “Among the tag-rag rabble of either sex That hung around the wretches as they writhed, Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye— A weeping woman, whose strained countenance, Sharpened against a looming livid cloud, Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon— The mother of one of those who suffered there I had heard her called when spoken roughly to By my ranged men for pressing forward so. It stole upon me hers was a face I knew; Yet when, or how, I had known it, for a while Eluded me. And then at once it came. “Some thirty years or more before that noon I was sub-captain of a company Drawn from the legion of Calabria, That marched up from Judæa north to Tyre. We had pierced the old flat country of Jezreel, The great Esdraelon Plain and fighting-floor Of Jew with Canaanite, and with the host Of Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, met While crossing there to strike the Assyrian pride. We left behind Gilboa; passed by Nain; Till bulging Tabor rose, embossed to the top With arbute, terabinth, and locust growths. “Encumbering me were sundry sick, so fallen Through drinking from a swamp beside the way; But we pressed on, till, bearing over a ridge, We dipt into a world of pleasantness— A vale, the fairest I had gazed upon— Which lapped a village on its furthest slopes Called Nazareth, brimmed round by uplands nigh. In the midst thereof a fountain bubbled, where, Lime-dry from marching, our glad halt we made To rest our sick ones, and refresh us all.