| |
| LO! above the mournful chanting, | |
| Rise the fuller-sounded wailings | |
| Of the soul’s most solemn anthem. | |
| Hark! the strains of deep Kol Nidra— | |
| Saddest music ever mortal | 5 |
| Taught his lips to hymn or sound! | |
| |
| Not the heart of one lone mortal | |
| Told his anguish in that strain; | |
| All the sorrow, pain, and struggles | |
| Of a people in despair, | 10 |
| Gathered from the vale of weeping, | |
| Through the ages of distress. | |
| ’T is a mighty cry of beings | |
| Held in bondage and affliction; | |
| All the wailing and lamenting | 15 |
| Of a homeless people, roaming | |
| O’er the plains and scattered hamlets | |
| Of a world without a refuge, | |
| All the sorrows, trials, bereavements,— | |
| Loss of country, home, and people,— | 20 |
| In one mighty strain uniting, | |
| Chant for every age its wail; | |
| Make the suffering years reëcho | |
| With the wounds and pains of yore; | |
| Give a voice to every martyr | 25 |
| Ever hushed to death by pain, | |
| Every smothered shriek of daughter | |
| Burned upon the fagot’s bier; | |
| Bring the wander-years and exile, | |
| Persecution’s harsh assailment, | 30 |
| Ghetto misery and hounding, | |
| To the ears of men to-day; | |
| Link the dark and dreary ages | |
| With the brighter future’s glow; | |
| Weave the past and hopeful present; | 35 |
| Bind the living with the sleeping, | |
| Dust unto the dust confessing, | |
| Even with the dead uniting, | |
| When the soul would join with God. | |
| |
| Slowly creep the muffled murmurs. | 40 |
| As the leaves and flowers, conspiring, | |
| Steal a breeze from summer’s chamber, | |
| Hum and mumble as they stroke it, | |
| Smooth, caress, and gently coy it, | |
| So this murmur spreads the voices | 45 |
| Of the praying synagogue, | |
| As each lip repeats the sinning | |
| Of his selfish, godless living, | |
| By each mutter low recounting | |
| Every single sin and crime— | 50 |
| How he falsified his neighbor, | |
| Made a stumbling-block for blindness, | |
| Cursed the deaf, unstaid the cripple, | |
| Played his son and daughter wrong, | |
| Tattled of his wife’s behavior, | 55 |
| Made his father’s age a load, | |
| Spoke belittling of his mother, | |
| Took advantage of the stupid, | |
| Made the hungry buy their bread, | |
| Turned the needy from his threshold, | 60 |
| Clothed the naked with his bareness, | |
| Shut the stranger from his fold, | |
| Never begged forgiveness, pardon, | |
| For a wrong aimed at a foe, | |
| Never weighed the love or mercy | 65 |
| Of the Father of the world. | |
| Low the lips are now repenting; | |
| Every mutter is a sob | |
| Ebbing from the font of being; | |
| Conscience speaks in lowest accents, | 70 |
| Lest the voice cry out to men. | |
| |
| Who has ever heard Kol Nidra | |
| Gushing from the breast of man, | |
| Rising, falling, as the ocean | |
| Lifts the waves in joy or fear. | 75 |
| From Time’s ocean has it risen; | |
| Every age has lent a murmur, | |
| Every cycle built a wail; | |
| Every sorrow ever dwelling | |
| In the tortured heart of man, | 80 |
| Tears and sighs together swelling, | |
| Answer for the pangs of ages. | |
| ’T is the voice of countless pilgrims, | |
| Sons of Jacob, with a cry, | |
| Moaning, sighing, grieving, wailing, | 85 |
| Answering in thousand voices | |
| Fate and destiny of man, | |
| Winning soul a consolation | |
| For their sad allotment’s creed; | |
| Wander-song of homeless traveller, | 90 |
| Outcast from the ranks of men; | |
| Echoes from the throes of mortals, | |
| Questioning the ways of God; | |
| Song hummed by the lonely desert, | |
| Prompted by the heart of night, | 95 |
| Lisped across the sandy borders | |
| By the desert’s trailing wind; | |
| Hymn of midnight and the silence, | |
| Song the friendless stars intone, | |
| Sung whene’er the tempest hurtles, | 100 |
| Bruits destruction to the world; | |
| Song of every song of sorrow, | |
| Wail for every grief and woe, | |
| World affliction, world lamenting; | |
| Sorrow of the lonely desert; | 105 |
| Sadness of a homeless people; | |
| Anguish of a chided mortal, | |
| Hounded, tracked, oppressed, and beaten, | |
| Made the scourge of God on earth; | |
| Outcry of a sinful bosom | 110 |
| Warring with his guilt and wrong. | |
| ’T is a saintly aspiration | |
| Of a holy soul in prayer; | |
| ’T is the music hummed by mercy, | |
| When the heart is touched by love. | 115 |
| ’T is the welding of all mercy, | |
| Love, forgiveness, in a union, | |
| Sweeping o’er the span of ages, | |
| Flooding earth with one majestic, | |
| Universal hymn of woe, | 120 |
| As if God had willed his children | |
| Weep in but one human strain. | |
| |
| Who can hear this strange Kol Nidra | |
| Without dropping in the spell? | |
| Lift the vestige of the present, | 125 |
| Link the momentary fleeting | |
| Of the evening with the past; | |
| Dwell a spirit in the ages, | |
| Living in the heart of time: | |
| Lose the sense of outer worlds, | 130 |
| Soul alone in endless time, | |
| Breathing but the breath of ages. | |
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