| |
| SAD eyes and dark she bends upon the throng, | |
| Man’s exile and Earth’s alien in all lands! | |
| Her ears drink up the street’s tempestuous song, | |
| And all its currents lave her where she stands. | |
| Not Time nor Place shall rob her of her dower | 5 |
| For rooted in her long remembrance dwell | |
| The days of glory and the realms of power, | |
| The temples and the tribes of Israel. | |
| |
| Not this crushed, driven multitude she sees, | |
| But priests and patriarchs that chant their psalms; | 10 |
| Not these stark walls of brick, but, all at ease, | |
| Her white-robed sisters by the springs and palms. | |
| And phantoms out of ancient days returning, | |
| Light up the amber vastness of her land; | |
| Oblivious to this stygian asphalt burning, | 15 |
| Her feet are cool on Jordan’s silver sand. | |
| |
| Disparted long and reft from Palestine, | |
| Lorn maiden of Judaea, dost thou wait | |
| By these strange walls of ages reared between | |
| Thee and some lover sealed and consecrate? | 20 |
| Dost thou seek here his face amidst these faces, | |
| His form from out this hurrying, sullen press, | |
| Or is thy mystic longing but thy race’s— | |
| Thou living statue of its mute distress? | |
| |
| Thou dusk-eyed daughter of Eternity, | 25 |
| Thou standest in the Visible and Now; | |
| The Past hath locked its mystery in thee, | |
| And Orient suns have rolled athwart thy brow. | |
| Thy face foreshadows fruitful generations, | |
| O nymph of Jewry from the iron lands!— | 30 |
| Art thou some Esther in the house of nations,— | |
| Some Judith with a falchion in her hands? | |
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