| Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917. | | | | The Hebrew Minstrel’s Lament | | Anonymous |
| | | FROM the hills of the West, as the sun’s setting beam | |
| Cast his last ray of glory o’er Jordan’s lone stream, | |
| While his fast-falling tears with its waters were blent, | |
| Thus poured a poor minstrel his saddened lament:— | |
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| “Awake, harp of Judah, that slumbering hast hung | 5 |
| On the willows that weep where thy prophets have sung; | |
| Once more wake for Judah thy wild notes of woe, | |
| Ere the hand that now strikes thee lies mouldering and low. | |
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| “Ah, where are the choirs of the glad and the free | |
| That woke the loud anthem responsive to thee, | 10 |
| When the daughters of Salem broke forth in the song, | |
| While Tabor and Hermon its echoes prolong? | |
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| “And where are the mighty, who went forth in pride | |
| To the slaughter of kings, with their ark at their side? | |
| They sleep, lonely stream, with the sands of thy shore, | 15 |
| And the war-trumpet’s blast shall awake them no more. | |
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| “O Judah, a lone, scattered remnant remain, | |
| To sigh for the graves of their fathers in vain, | |
| And to turn toward thy land with a tear-brimming eye, | |
| And a prayer that the advent of Shiloh be nigh. | 20 |
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| “No beauty in Sharon, on Carmel no shade; | |
| Our vineyards are wasted, our altars decayed; | |
| And the heel of the heathen, insulting, has trod | |
| On the bosoms that bled for their country and God.” | | | | |
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