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| RABBI BEN ZADOK, o’er the sacred law | |
| Bending with reverent joy, with sacred awe | |
| Read the commandment: “When thy harvest yields | |
| Its fruit and thou when reaping in the fields, | |
| Dost there forget a sheaf of golden grain, | 5 |
| Fetch it not in to thee! It shall remain— | |
| The poor, the stranger and the widow’s store | |
| And the Lord God shall bless thee evermore.” | |
| Rabbi ben Zadok closed the well-loved book, | |
| And, gazing upward with a troubled look, | 10 |
| He said: “With joy do I obey, O Lord, | |
| Each hest and precept of Thy holy word, | |
| For which Thy name at morn and eve I bless. | |
| But this commandment of forgetfulness | |
| I have not yet performed as Thou hast willed | 15 |
| Since to remember leaves unfilled.” | |
| So mused the Rabbi. But when autumn came, | |
| And waves of corn glowed ’neath the sunset’s flame, | |
| It chanced at evening, that, his labors o’er, | |
| He stood and gazed upon his garnered, store, | 20 |
| And suddenly to him his little son | |
| Came saying: “Father, see what thou hast done! | |
| Three sheaves in yonder field I have espied | |
| Forgotten!” “Oh!” the pious rabbi cried, | |
| “Blessed art Thou, O Lord, whose gracious will | 25 |
| Enables me Thy bidding to fulfil, | |
| Even through some oversight!” And with the day | |
| Unto the house of God he took his way, | |
| And offered of his flocks and herds the best, | |
| For joy to have obeyed the Lord’s behest. | 30 |
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| Thus runs the Talmud tale! O God, may we | |
| Thus evermore rejoice in serving Thee. | |
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