Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire,
While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.
The final line of these stanzas may offer a metrical stumbling-block until one catches the sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. Scollard is nothing if not lyrical, and it would be easier for the traditional camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a captious critic to discover a metrical falsity in his tuneful song.
But to return to the Orient, not alone the reverence for the Christian faith speaks in these poems, but the artistic beauty in the Moslem and other faiths has entered into
them; one is stirred to sympathetic devotion by these lines,—
From many a marble minaret
We heard the rapt muezzin’s call;
And to the prayerful cries my guide,
During each trembling interval,
With reverence serene replied,—