Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AT SAMARIA by CLINTON SCOLLARD

First Line: WE CLIMBED THE HILL WHERE FROM SAMARIA'S CROWN
Last Line: AND HEROD BUT THE SHADOW OF A NAME!
Subject(s): HEROD THE GREAT (73-4 B.C.); JEWS; JUDAISM;
WE climbed the hill where from Samaria's crown
In marble majesty once looked away
Toward Hermon, white beneath the Syrian day;
And lo, no vestige of the old renown.

Save a long colonnade bescarred and brown,
Remained to tell of Herod's regal sway,
The gold, the gauds, the imperial display,
He heaped on Judah's erewhile princely town.

Ruin was riotous; decay was king;
An olive -root engript the topmost stone
As tho it clutched and crusht the thing called fame;
Seemed as a fragile wind-flower petal blown
Into the void, the past's vain glorying,
And Herod but the shadow of a name!



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