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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Louis Untermeyer

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Beloved

Louis Untermeyer

YOU are my holy city, my beloved;

Dark as Jerusalem and bright as Rome.

The gates of you are opened generously

To take the prodigal home.

What foreign towns I knew have never dimmed

The burning memory of your altar-fire;

My backward-hungering heart has always heard

In other songs, your choir.

I kiss your lips and dream of Lebanon!

You are my living Zion; and I rest

Here in the temple of your body’s grace,

Beneath the white wall of your breast.