Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The New Jerusalem by G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
page 53 of 280 (18%)
near invisible. The traveller comes on the Moslem dome round a corner;
and he finds the Christian dome, as it were, behind his own back.
But if he goes on round the wall to the north-east corner of the Court
of the Temple, he will find the next entrance; the Gate of St. Stephen.
On the slope outside, by a strange and suitable coincidence,
the loose stones which lie on every side of the mountain city
seemed to be heaped higher; and across the valley on the skirts
of the Mount of Olives is the great grey olive of Gethsemane.

On the northern side the valley turns to an artificial trench,
for the ground here is higher; and the next or northern gate bears
the name of Herod; though it might well bear the name either
of Godfrey or Saladin. For just outside it stands a pine-tree,
and beside it a rude bulk of stone; where stood these great
captains in turn, before they took Jerusalem. Then the wall runs
on till it comes to the great Damascus Gate, graven I know not
why with great roses in a style wholly heraldic and occidental,
and in no way likely to remind us of the rich roses of Damascus;
though their name has passed into our own English tongue and tradition,
along with another word for the delicate decoration of the sword.
But at the first glance, at any rate, it is hard to believe that
the roses on the walls are not the Western roses of York or Lancaster,
or that the swords which guarded them were not the straight swords
of England or of France. Doubtless a deeper and more solemn memory
ought to return immediately to the mind where that gate looks down
the great highway; as if one could see, hung over it in the sky for ever,
the cloud concealing the sunburst that broods upon the road to Damascus.
But I am here only confessing the facts or fancies of my first impression;
and again the fancy that came to me first was not of any such
alien or awful things. I did not think of damask or damascene
DigitalOcean Referral Badge