The one people once called

King in jest, God in fact,

Who was killed, and whose implement of torture

Was heated by the warmth of my breast …

The disciples of Christ tasted death,

And the old gossips, and the soldiers,

And the procurator from Rome—all gone.

There, where once the arch rose,

Where the sea splashed, where the cliff turned black,

They were imbibed with the wine, inhaled with the stifling dust

And the fragrance of immortal roses.

Gold rusts and steel decays,

Marble crumbles away. Everything is on the verge of death.

The most reliable thing on earth is sorrow,

And the most enduring—the almighty Word.