Classic Poem

" Lonely, " you said, and whispered low the word
As though it held you captive in its power.
I stood so close, yet still you needs must cower —
So close in the darkened doorway that I heard
Your heart beat, frail as any far-flown bird
Throbbing its ache in some abandoned bower.
And sudden you felt broken, like a flower
The winds have blasted and the snows interred.

Helpless we stood, and dumb. Yet knew we where
To win us kinship in our agony:
Princes and prophets and the world's most rare,
Like us, walked on the earth forsakenly:
Among them One who, being lonely there,
Wept, in the Garden of Gethsemane.