Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917.
By Horace M. KallenThe False Hope
M
The Midased face shine clear of its gilt dream
The lightning gaze that should beseem
The answerer; the flash shall fire the skies
With beauty of a mighty heart that flies
Strong with its hope and in its strength supreme
With its own life a people’s life redeem,
Ordained and sealed unto this enterprise.
The swinish sleep, the dream, the easihead!
What turns him from the master—Circumstance
To slumber and a trough of unearned bread!
O sluggard, spendthrift of the fateful Chance!
O shameless shame of our heroic dead.