| Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917. | | | | Song of Judas Maccabeus before the Battle of Maspha | | By Rebekah Hyneman |
| | | ON, warriors and chiefs! every step we have trod, | |
| Though blood-stained with carnage and heaped with the slain, | |
| Bear witness we fight for the glory of God, | |
| Whose aid we have asked, nor entreated in vain. | |
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| Attest it your armies, whose glittering array | 5 |
| At noonday outshown in his splendor the sun, | |
| Attest it ye proud girded warriors, who lay | |
| Unhonored and cold when the battle was done. | |
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| They came to subdue us, Oh, God of the just! | |
| Thy arm was our shield, Thy protection our power, | 10 |
| Still aid and defend us, Oh, Thou whom we trust, | |
| In prosperity’s pride and affliction’s dark hour. | |
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| When we cease to remember the martyrs, whose blood | |
| They have poured out like water, may we be forgot; | |
| When we cease to remember the fierce pangs they withstood, | 15 |
| May our strength be derided, our memory a blot. | |
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| Oh, falter not when their fierce glittering host | |
| Comes spreading destruction and blight o’er the land; | |
| Remember proud Syrian, how vain was his boast, | |
| And firm be your hearts like the rocks where you stand. | 20 |
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| Then on! can ye waver when Heaven’s pure light | |
| Smiles approvingly down on the path we have trod? | |
| On! on! be it victory or death! ere the night | |
| We have conquered or died for the glory of God. | | | | |
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