The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2
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Title: The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2
Author: Emma Lazarus
Release date: October 1, 2002 [eBook #3473]
Most recently updated: January 13, 2009
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3473
Credits: Produced by Douglas E. Levy, and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF EMMA LAZARUS, VOLUME 2 ***
Produced by Douglas E. Levy
THE POEMS of EMMA LAZARUS
By Emma Lazarus
in Two Volumes
VOL. II.
Jewish Poems: Translation
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
As a convenience to the reader I have included in this volume the
biographical sketch of Emma Lazarus which originally appeared only
in Vol. I. of these works. Further, the sketch contains references
to passages contained in this volume.--D.L.
CONTENTS.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF EMMA LAZARUS.
THE NEW YEAR.
THE CROWING OF THE RED COCK.
IN EXILE.
IN MEMORIAM--REV. J. J. LYONS.
THE VALLEY OF THE BACA.
THE BANNER OF THE JEW.
THE GUARDIAN OF THE RED DISK.
THE NEW EZEKIEL.
THE CHOICE.
THE WORLD'S JUSTICE.
THE SUPREME SACRIFICE.
THE FEAST OF LIGHT GIFTS.
BAR KOCHBA.
1492.
THE BIRTH OF MAN.
RASCHI IN PRAGUE.
THE DEATH OF RASCHI.
AN EPISTLE.
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE.
I. The Exodus.
II. Treasures.
III. The Sower.
IV. The Test.
V. Currents.
VI. The Prophet.
VII. Chrysalis.
TO CARMEN SYLVA.
THE DANCE TO DEATH.
TRANSLATIONS.
FROM SOLOMON BEN JUDAH GABIROL.
Night-Piece.
Night-Thoughts.
Meditations.
Hymn.
To a Detractor.
Fragment.
Stanzas.
Wine and Grief.
Defiance.
A Degenerate Age.
FROM ABUL HASSAN JUDAH BEN HA-LEVI.
A Letter to his Friend Isaac.
Admonition.
Love-Song.
Separation.
Longing for Jerusalem.
On the Voyage to Jerusalem.
To the West Wind.
FROM MOSES BEN ESRA.
Extracts from the Book of Tarshish, or "Necklace of Pearls."
In the Night.
Love Song of Alcharisi.
NACHUM.
Spring Songs.
A TRANSLATION AND TWO IMITATIONS.
I. Donna Clara.
II. Don Pedrillo.
III. Fra Pedro.
TRANSLATIONS FROM PETRARCH.
In Vita, LXVII.
In Vita, LXXVI.
In Vita, CV.
In Vita, CIX.
In Morte, II. On the Death of Cardinal Colonna and Laura.
In Morte, XLIII.
In Vita. Canzone XI.
Fragment. Canzone XII.
Fragment. Trionfo d'Amore.
Fragment. Trionfo della Morte.
TRANSLATIONS FROM ALFRED DE MUSSET.
The May Night.
The October Night.
NOTES TO "EPISTLE" OF JOSHUA IBN VIVES OF ALLORQUI.
Most of the poems in this volume were originally printed in
"The American Hebrew."
Publisher's note: Thanks are due to the Editors of "The Century,"
Lippincott's Magazine, and "The Critic," for their courtesy in
allowing the poems published by them to be reprinted in these pages.
EMMA LAZARUS. (Written for "The Century Magazine")
Born July 22, 1849; Died November 19, 1887.
One hesitates to lift the veil and throw the light upon a life so hidden
and a personality so withdrawn as that of Emma Lazarus; but while her
memory is fresh, and the echo of her songs still lingers in these pages,
we feel it a duty to call up her presence once more, and to note the
traits that made it remarkable and worthy to shine out clearly before
the world. Of dramatic episode or climax in her life there is none;
outwardly all was placid and serene, like an untroubled stream whose
depths alone hold the strong, quick tide. The story of her life is the
story of a mind, of a spirit, ever seeking, ever striving, and pressing
onward and upward to new truth and light. Her works are the mirror of
this progress. In reviewing them, the first point that strikes us is the
precocity, or rather the spontaneity, of her poetic gift. She was a born
singer; poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort
than to speak, for she was a shy, sensitive child, with strange reserves
and reticences, not easily putting herself "en rapport" with those
around her. Books were her world from her earliest years; in them she
literally lost and found herself. She was eleven years old when the War
of Succession broke out, which inspired her first lyric outbursts.
Her poems and translations written between the ages of fourteen and
seventeen were collected, and constituted her first published volume.
Crude and immature as these productions naturally were, and utterly
condemned by the writer's later judgment, they are, nevertheless, highly
interesting and characteristic, giving, as they do, the keynote of
much that afterwards unfolded itself in her life. One cannot fail to
be rather painfully impressed by the profound melancholy pervading the
book. The opening poem is "In Memoriam,"--on the death of a school
friend and companion; and the two following poems also have death for
theme. "On a Lock of my Mother's Hair" gives us reflections on growing
old. These are the four poems written at the age of fourteen. There is
not a wholly glad and joyous strain in the volume, and we might smile
at the recurrence of broken vows, broken hearts, and broken lives in the
experience of this maiden just entered upon her teens, were it not
that the innocent child herself is in such deadly earnest. The two long
narrative poems, "Bertha" and "Elfrida," are tragic in the extreme. Both
are dashed off apparently at white heat: "Elfrida," over fifteen hundred
lines of blank verse, in two weeks; "Bertha," in three and a half. We
have said that Emma Lazarus was a born singer, but she did not sing,
like a bird, for joy of being alive; and of being young, alas! there is
no hint in these youthful effusions, except inasmuch as this unrelieved
gloom, this ignorance of "values," so to speak, is a sign of youth,
common especially among gifted persons of acute and premature
sensibilities, whose imagination, not yet focused by reality,
overreached the mark. With Emma Lazarus, however, this sombre streak has
a deeper root; something of birth and temperament is in it--the stamp
and heritage of a race born to suffer. But dominant and fundamental
though it was, Hebraism was only latent thus far. It was classic
and romantic art that first attracted and inspired her. She pictures
Aphrodite the beautiful, arising from the waves, and the beautiful
Apollo and his loves,--Daphne, pursued by the god, changing into the
laurel, and the enamored Clytie into the faithful sunflower. Beauty, for
its own sake, supreme and unconditional, charmed her primarily and
to the end. Her restless spirit found repose in the pagan idea,--the
absolute unity and identity of man with nature, as symbolized in the
Greek myths, where every natural force becomes a person, and where, in
turn, persons pass with equal readiness and freedom back into nature
again.
In this connection a name would suggest itself even if it did not
appear,--Heine, the Greek, Heine the Jew, Heine the Romanticist, as Emma
Lazarus herself has styled him; and already in this early volume of hers
we have trace of the kinship and affinity that afterwards so plainly
declared itself. Foremost among the translations are a number of
his songs, rendered with a finesse and a literalness that are rarely
combined. Four years later, at the age of twenty-one, she published her
second volume, "Admetus and Other Poems," which at once took rank as
literature both in America and England, and challenged comparison with
the work of established writers. Of classic themes we have "Admetus" and
"Orpheus," and of romantic the legend of Tannhauser and of the saintly
Lohengrin. All are treated with an artistic finish that shows perfect
mastery of her craft, without detracting from the freshness and flow of
her inspiration. While sounding no absolutely new note in the world,
she yet makes us aware of a talent of unusual distinction, and a highly
endowed nature,--a sort of tact of sentiment and expression, an instinct
of the true and beautiful, and that quick intuition which is like
second-sight in its sensitiveness to apprehend and respond to external
stimulus. But it is not the purely imaginative poems in this volume that
most deeply interest us. We come upon experience of life in these pages;
not in the ordinary sense, however, of outward activity and movement,
but in the hidden undercurrent of being. "The epochs of our life are not
in the visible facts, but in the silent thoughts by the wayside as we
walk." This is the motto, drawn from Emerson, which she chooses for her
poem of "Epochs," which marks a pivotal moment in her life. Difficult
to analyze, difficult above all to convey, if we would not encroach
upon the domain of private and personal experience, is the drift of
this poem, or rather cycle of poems, that ring throughout with a deeper
accent and a more direct appeal than has yet made itself felt. It is the
drama of the human soul,--"the mystic winged and flickering butterfly,"
"flitting between earth and sky," in its passage from birth to death.
A golden morning of June! "Sweet empty sky without a stain." Sunlight
and mist and "ripple of rain-fed rills." "A murmur and a singing
manifold."
"What simple things be these the soul to raise
To bounding joy, and make young pulses beat
With nameless pleasure, finding life so sweet!"
Such is youth, a June day, fair and fresh and tender with dreams and
longing and vague desire. The morn lingers and passes, but the noon has
not reached its height before the clouds begin to rise, the sunshine
dies, the air grows thick and heavy, the lightnings flash, the thunder
breaks among the hills, rolls and gathers and grows, until
Behold, yon bolt struck home,
And over ruined fields the storm hath come."
Now we have the phases of the soul,--the shock and surprise of grief in
the face of the world made desolate. Loneliness and despair for a space,
and then, like stars in the night, the new births of the spirit, the
wonderful outcoming from sorrow: the mild light of patience at first;
hope and faith kindled afresh in the very jaws of evil; the new meaning
and worth of life beyond sorrow, beyond joy; and finally duty, the
holiest word of all, that leads at last to victory and peace. The poem
rounds and completes itself with the close of "the long, rich day," and
the release of
"The mystic winged and flickering butterfly,
A human soul, that drifts at liberty,
Ah! who can tell to what strange paradise,
To what undreamed-of fields and lofty skies!"
We have dwelt at some length upon this poem, which seems to us, in a
certain sense, subjective and biographical; but upon closer analysis
there is still another conclusion to arrive at. In "Epochs" we have,
doubtless, the impress of a calamity brought very near to the writer,
and profoundly working upon her sensibilities; not however by direct,
but reflex action, as it were, and through sympathetic emotion--the
emotion of the deeply-stirred spectator, of the artist, the poet who
lives in the lives of others, and makes their joys and their sorrows his
own.
Before dismissing this volume we may point out another clue as to the
shaping of mind and character. The poem of "Admetus" is dedicated "to
my friend Ralph Waldo Emerson." Emma Lazarus was between seventeen and
eighteen years of age when the writings of Emerson fell into her hands,
and it would be difficult to over-estimate the impression produced upon
her. As she afterwards wrote: "To how many thousand youthful hearts has
not his word been the beacon--nay, more, the guiding star--that led them
safely through periods of mental storm and struggle!" Of no one is this
more true than herself. Left, to a certain extent, without compass or
guide, without any positive or effective religious training, this was
the first great moral revelation of her life. We can easily realize
the chaos and ferment of an over-stimulated brain, steeped in romantic
literature, and given over to the wayward leadings of the imagination.
Who can tell what is true, what is false, in a world where fantasy is as
real as fact? Emerson's word fell like truth itself, "a shaft of light
shot from the zenith," a golden rule of thought and action. His books
were bread and wine to her, and she absorbed them into her very being.
She felt herself invincibly drawn to the master, "that fount of wisdom
and goodness," and it was her great privilege during these years to be
brought into personal relations with him. From the first he showed her
a marked interest and sympathy, which became for her one of the most
valued possessions of her life. He criticised her work with the fine
appreciation and discrimination that made him quick to discern the
quality of her talent as well as of her personality, and he was no doubt
attracted by her almost transparent sincerity and singleness of soul, as
well as by the simplicity and modesty that would have been unusual even
in a person not gifted. He constituted himself, in a way, her literary
mentor, advised her as to the books she should read and the attitude of
mind she should cultivate. For some years he corresponded with her very
faithfully; his letters are full of noble and characteristic utterances,
and give evidence of a warm regard that in itself was a stimulus and
a high incentive. But encouragement even from so illustrious a source
failed to elate the young poetess, or even to give her a due sense of
the importance and value of her work, or the dignity of her vocation.
We have already alluded to her modesty in her unwillingness to
assert herself or claim any prerogative,--something even morbid
and exaggerated, which we know not how to define, whether as
over-sensitiveness or indifference. Once finished, the heat and glow of
composition spent, her writings apparently ceased to interest her. She
often resented any allusion to them on the part of intimate friends, and
the public verdict as to their excellence could not reassure or satisfy
her. The explanation is not far, perhaps, to seek. Was it not the "Ewig-
Weibliche" that allows no prestige but its own? Emma Lazarus was a true
woman, too distinctly feminine to wish to be exceptional, or to stand
alone and apart, even by virtue of superiority.
A word now as to her life and surroundings. She was one of a family of
seven, and her parents were both living. Her winters were passed in
New York, and her summers by the sea. In both places her life was
essentially quiet and retired. The success of her book had been mainly
in the world of letters. In no wise tricked out to catch the public
eye, her writings had not yet made her a conspicuous figure, but were
destined slowly to take their proper place and give her the rank that
she afterwards held.
For some years now almost everything that she wrote was published in
"Lippincott's Magazine," then edited by John Foster Kirk, and we shall
still find in her poems the method and movement of her life. Nature
is still the fount and mirror, reflecting, and again reflected, in the
soul. We have picture after picture, almost to satiety, until we grow
conscious of a lack of substance and body and of vital play to the
thought, as though the brain were spending itself in dreamings and
reverie, the heart feeding upon itself, and the life choked by its
own fullness without due outlet. Happily, however, the heavy cloud of
sadness has lifted, and we feel the subsidence of waves after a storm.
She sings "Matins:"--
"Does not the morn break thus,
Swift, bright, victorious,
With new skies cleared for us
Over the soul storm-tost?
Her night was long and deep,
Strange visions vexed her sleep,
Strange sorrows bade her weep,
Her faith in dawn was lost.
"No halt, no rest for her,
The immortal wanderer
From sphere to higher sphere
Toward the pure source of day.
The new light shames her fears,
Her faithlessness and tears,
As the new sun appears
To light her god-like way."
Nature is the perpetual resource and consolation. "'T is good to be
alive!" she says, and why? Simply,
"To see the light
That plays upon the grass, to feel (and sigh
With perfect pleasure) the mild breeze stir
Among the garden roses, red and white,
With whiffs of fragrancy."
She gives us the breath of the pines and of the cool, salt seas,
"illimitably sparkling." Her ears drink the ripple of the tide, and she
stops
"To gaze as one who is not satisfied
With gazing at the large, bright, breathing sea."
"Phantasies" (after Robert Schumann) is the most complete and perfect
poem of this period. Like "Epochs," it is a cycle of poems, and the
verse has caught the very trick of music,--alluring, baffling, and
evasive. This time we have the landscape of the night, the glamour of
moon and stars,--pictures half real and half unreal, mystic imaginings,
fancies, dreams, and the enchantment of "faerie," and throughout the
unanswered cry, the eternal "Wherefore" of destiny. Dawn ends the song
with a fine clear note, the return of day, night's misty phantoms
rolled away, and the world itself, again green, sparkling and breathing
freshness.
In 1874 she published "Alide," a romance in prose drawn from Goethe's
autobiography. It may be of interest to quote the letter she received
from Tourgeneff on this occasion:--
"Although, generally speaking, I do not think it advisable
to take celebrated men, especially poets and artists, as a
subject for a novel, still I am truly glad to say that I
have read your book with the liveliest interest. It is
very sincere and very poetical at the same time; the life
and spirit of Germany have no secrets for you, and your
characters are drawn with a pencil as delicate as it is
strong. I feel very proud of the approbation you give to
my works, and of the influence you kindly attribute to them
on your own talent; an author who write as you do is not
a pupil in art any more; he is not far from being himself
a master."
Charming and graceful words, of which the young writer was justly proud.
About this time occurred the death of her mother, the first break in the
home and family circle. In August of 1876 she made a visit to Concord,
at the Emersons', memorable enough for her to keep a journal and note
down every incident and detail. Very touching to read now, in its almost
childlike simplicity, is this record of "persons that pass and shadows
that remain." Mr. Emerson himself meets her at the station, and drives
with her in his little one-horse wagon to his home, the gray square
house, with dark green blinds, set amidst noble trees. A glimpse of the
family,--"the stately, white-haired Mrs. Emerson, and the beautiful,
faithful Ellen, whose figure seems always to stand by the side of her
august father." Then the picture of Concord itself, lovely and smiling,
with its quiet meadows, quiet slopes, and quietest of rivers. She meets
the little set of Concord people: Mr. Alcott, for whom she does not
share Mr. Emerson's enthusiasm; and William Ellery Channing, whose
figure stands out like a gnarled and twisted scrub-oak,--a pathetic,
impossible creature, whose cranks and oddities were submitted to on
account of an innate nobility of character. "Generally crabbed and
reticent with strangers, he took a liking to me," says Emma Lazarus.
"The bond of our sympathy was my admiration for Thoreau, whose memory he
actually worships, having been his constant companion in his best
days, and his daily attendant in the last years of illness and heroic
suffering. I do not know whether I was most touched by the thought of
the unique, lofty character that had inspired this depth and fervor of
friendship, or by the pathetic constancy and pure affection of the poor,
desolate old man before me, who tried to conceal his tenderness and
sense of irremediable loss by a show of gruffness and philosophy. He
never speaks of Thoreau's death," she says, "but always 'Thoreau's
loss,' or 'when I lost Mr. Thoreau,' or 'when Mr. Thoreau went away from
Concord;' nor would he confess that he missed him, for there was not a
day, an hour, a moment, when he did not feel that his friend was still
with him and had never left him. And yet a day or two after," she goes
on to say, "when I sat with him in the sunlit wood, looking at the
gorgeous blue and silver summer sky, he turned to me and said: 'Just
half of the world died for me when I lost Mr. Thoreau. None of it looks
the same as when I looked at it with him.'... He took me through the
woods and pointed out to me every spot visited and described by his
friend. Where the hut stood is a little pile of stones, and a sign,
'Site of Thoreau's Hut,' and a few steps beyond is the pond with
thickly-wooded shore,--everything exquisitely peaceful and beautiful in
the afternoon light, and not a sound to be heard except the crickets or
the 'z-ing' of the locusts which Thoreau has described. Farther on he
pointed out to me, in the distant landscape, a low roof, the only one
visible, which was the roof of Thoreau's birthplace. He had been over
there many times, he said, since he lost Mr. Thoreau, but had never gone
in,--he was afraid it might look lonely! But he had often sat on a
rock in front of the house and looked at it." On parting from his young
friend, Mr. Channing gave her a package, which proved to be a copy of
his own book on Thoreau, and the pocket compass which Thoreau carried to
the Maine woods and on all his excursions. Before leaving the Emersons
she received the proof-sheets of her drama of "The Spagnoletto," which
was being printed for private circulation. She showed them to Mr.
Emerson, who had expressed a wish to see them, and, after reading them,
he gave them back to her with the comment that they were "good." She
playfully asked him if he would not give her a bigger word to take home
to the family. He laughed, and said he did not know of any; but he
went on to tell her that he had taken it up, not expecting to read it
through, and had not been able to put it down. Every word and line told
of richness in the poetry, he said, and as far as he could judge
the play had great dramatic opportunities. Early in the autumn "The
Spagnoletto" appeared,--a tragedy in five acts, the scene laid in Italy,
1655.
Without a doubt, every one in these days will take up with misgiving,
and like Mr. Emerson "not expecting to read it through," a five-act
tragedy of the seventeenth century, so far removed apparently from the
age and present actualities,--so opposed to the "Modernite," which has
come to be the last word of art. Moreover, great names at once appear;
great shades arise to rebuke the presumptuous new-comer in this highest
realm of expression. "The Spagnoletto" has grave defects that would
probably preclude its ever being represented on the stage. The denoument
especially is unfortunate, and sins against our moral and aesthetic
instinct. The wretched, tiger-like father stabs himself in the presence
of his crushed and erring daughter, so that she may forever be haunted
by the horror and the retribution of his death. We are left suspended,
as it were, over an abyss, our moral judgment thwarted, our humanity
outraged. But "The Spagnoletto" is, nevertheless, a remarkable
production, and pitched in another key from anything the writer has
yet given us. Heretofore we have only had quiet, reflective, passive
emotion: now we have a storm and sweep of passion for which we were
quite unprepared. Ribera's character is charged like a thunder-cloud
with dramatic elements. Maria Rosa is the child of her father, fired at
a flash, "deaf, dumb, and blind" at the touch of passion.
"Does love steal gently o'er our soul?"
she asks;
"What if he come,
A cloud, a fire, a whirlwind?"
and then the cry:
"O my God!
This awful joy in mine own heart is love."
Again:
"While you are here the one thing real to me
In all the universe is love."
Exquisitely tender and refined are the love scenes--at the ball and in
the garden--between the dashing prince-lover in search of his pleasure
and the devoted girl with her heart in her eyes, on her lips, in her
hand. Behind them, always like a tragic fate, the somber figure of the
Spagnoletto, and over all the glow and color and soul of Italy.
In 1881 appeared the translation of Heine's poems and ballads, which was
generally accepted as the best version of that untranslatable poet. Very
curious is the link between that bitter, mocking, cynic spirit and the
refined, gentle spirit of Emma Lazarus. Charmed by the magic of his
verse, the iridescent play of his fancy, and the sudden cry of the heart
piercing through it all, she is as yet unaware or only vaguely conscious
of the of the real bond between them: the sympathy in the blood,
the deep, tragic, Judaic passion of eighteen hundred years that was
smouldering in her own heart, soon to break out and change the whole
current of thought and feeling.
Already, in 1879, the storm was gathering. In a distant province of
Russia at first, then on the banks of the Volga, and finally in Moscow
itself, the old cry was raised, the hideous mediaeval charge revived,
and the standard of persecution unfurled against the Jews. Province
after province took it up. In Bulgaria, Servia, and, above all,
Roumania, where, we were told, the sword of the Czar had been drawn to
protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place of Moslem
atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark annals of
violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but in Germany,
the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the rage of
Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency. In
Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America could
scarcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and for a while
we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon rudely awakened
from our insensibility, and forced to face the truth. It was in England
that the voice was first raised in behalf of justice and humanity.
In January, 1881, there appeared in the "London Times" a series of
articles, carefully compiled on the testimony of eye-witnesses, and
confirmed by official documents, records, etc., giving an account of
events that had been taking place in southern and western Russia during
a period of nine months, between April and December of 1880. We do
not need to recall the sickening details. The headings will suffice:
outrage, murder, arson, and pillage, and the result,--100,000 Jewish
families made homeless and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of
property destroyed. Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy
and indignation from America. "It is not that it is the oppression
of Jews by Russia," said Mr. Evarts in the meeting at Chickering Hall
Wednesday evening, February 4; "it is that it is the oppression of men
and women, and we are men and women." So spoke civilized Christendom,
and for Judaism,--who can describe that thrill of brotherhood, quickened
anew, the immortal pledge of the race, made one again through sorrow?
For Emma Lazarus it was a trumpet call that awoke slumbering and
unguessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking heroic ideals in
alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan mythology and mystic,
mediaeval Christianity, ignoring her very birthright,--the majestic
vista of the past, down which, "high above flood and fire," had been
conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral Law. Hitherto Judaism had been
a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese descent, her family had always been
members of the oldest and most orthodox congregation of New York, where
strict adherence to custom and ceremonial was the watchword of faith;
but it was only during her childhood and earliest years that she
attended the synagogue, and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages
which she had now long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing
on modern life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As
late as April, 1882, she published in "The Century Magazine" an
article written probably some months before, entitled "Was the Earl of
Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" in which she is disposed to accept
as the type of the modern Jew the brilliant, successful, but not
over-scrupulous chevalier d'industrie. In view of subsequent, or rather
contemporaneous events, the closing paragraph of the article in question
is worthy of being cited:--
"Thus far their religion [the Jewish], whose mere preservation
under such adverse conditions seems little short of a miracle,
has been deprived of the natural means of development and
progress, and has remained a stationary force. The next
hundred years will, in our opinion be the test of their
vitality as a people; the phase of toleration upon which
they are only now entering will prove whether or not they
are capable of growth."
By a curious, almost fateful juxtaposition, in the same number of the
magazine appeared Madame Ragozin's defense of Russian barbarity, and in
the following (May) number Emma Lazarus's impassioned appeal and reply,
"Russian Christianity versus Modern Judaism." From this time dated the
crusade that she undertook in behalf of her race, and the consequent
expansion of all her faculties, the growth of spiritual power which
always ensues when a great cause is espoused and a strong conviction
enters the soul. Her verse rang out as it had never rung before,--a
clarion note, calling a people to heroic action and unity, to the
consciousness and fulfillment of a grand destiny. When has Judaism been
so stirred as by "The Crowing of the Red Cock" and
THE BANNER OF THE JEW.
Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
His five-fold lion-lineage;
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.
From Mizpeh's mountain ridge they saw
Jerusalem's empty streets; her shrine
Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law
With idol and with pagan sign.
Mourners in tattered black were there
With ashes sprinkled on their hair.
Then from the stony peak there rang
A blast to ope the graves; down poured
The Maccabean clan, who sang
Their battle anthem to the Lord.
Five heroes lead, and following, see
Ten thousand rush to victory!
Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleeper high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance, but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.
Oh, deem not dead that martial fire,
Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses' law and David's lyre,
Your ancient strength remains unbent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW!
A rag, a mock at first,--erelong
When men have bled and women wept,
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it and to save.
Strike! for the brave revere the brave!
The dead forms burst their bonds and lived again. She sings "Rosh
Hashanah" (the Jewish New Year) and "Hanuckah" (the Feast of Lights):--
"Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on Evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eight-fold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born."
And "The New Ezekiel:"--
"What! can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again:
Say to the wind, come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live, upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word.
Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land."
Her whole being renewed and refreshed itself at its very source. She
threw herself into the study of her race, its language, literature, and
history.
Breaking the outward crust, she pierced to the heart of the faith and
"the miracle" of its survival. What was it other than the ever-present,
ever-vivifying spirit itself, which cannot die,--the religious and
ethical zeal which fires the whole history of the people, and of which
she herself felt the living glow within her own soul? She had come upon
the secret and the genius of Judaism,--that absolute interpenetration
and transfusion of spirit with body and substance which, taken
literally, often reduces itself to a question of food and drink, a
dietary regulation, and again, in proper splendor, incarnates itself
and shines out before humanity in the prophets, teachers, and saviors of
mankind.
Those were busy, fruitful years for Emma Lazarus, who worked, not with
the pen alone, but in the field of practical and beneficent activity.
For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of immigration had
set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted human beings flying
from their fellow-men, while all the time, like a tocsin, rang the
terrible story of cruelty and persecution,--horrors that the pen refuses
to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands they flocked upon our
shores,--helpless, innocent victims of injustice and oppression,
panic-stricken in the midst of strange and utterly new surroundings.
Emma Lazarus came into personal contact with these people, and visited
them in their refuge on Ward Island. While under the influence of all
the emotions aroused by this great crisis in the history of her race,
she wrote the "Dance of Death," a drama of persecution of the twelfth
century, founded upon the authentic records,--unquestionably her finest
work in grasp and scope, and, above all, in moral elevation and purport.
The scene is laid in Nordhausen, a free city in Thuringia, where the
Jews, living, as the deemed, in absolute security and peace, were caught
up in the wave of persecution that swept over Europe at that time.
Accused of poisoning the wells and causing the pestilence, or black
death, as it was called, they were condemned to be burned.
We do not here intend to enter upon a critical or literary analysis of
the play, or to point out dramatic merits or defects, but we should
like to make its readers feel with us the holy ardor and impulse of
the writer and the spiritual import of the work. The action is without
surprise, the doom fixed from the first; but so glowing is the canvas
with local and historic color, so vital and intense the movement, so
resistless, the "internal evidence," if we may call it thus, penetrating
its very substance and form, that we are swept along as by a wave of
human sympathy and grief. In contrast with "The Spagnoletto," how large
is the theme and how all-embracing the catastrophe! In place of the
personal we have the drama of the universal. Love is only a flash
now,--a dream caught sight of and at once renounced at a higher claim.
"Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid?
Why should you tremble?
Prince, I am afraid!
Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy,
A blasphemy against my father's grief,
My people's agony!
"What good shall come, forswearing kith and God,
To follow the allurements of the heart?"
asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for he princely wooer
and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast.
"O God!
How shall I pray for strength to love him less
Than mine own soul!
No more of that,
I am all Israel's now. Till this cloud pass,
I have no thought, no passion, no desire,
Save for my people."
Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,--fortitude and courage,
and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are worth
living and dying for.
The Jews pass by in procession--men, women, and children--on their way
to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the
gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the perpetual lamp and the
seven branched silver candle-stick of the synagogue. The crowd hoot and
jeer at them.
"The misers! they will take their gems and gold
Down to the grave!"
"Let us rejoice"
sing the Jewish youths in chorus; and the maidens:--
"Our feet stand within thy gates, O Zion!
Within thy portals, O Jerusalem!"
The flames rise and dart among them; their garments wave, their jewels
flash, as they dance and sing in the crimson blaze. The music ceases, a
sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry,--"Hallelujah!" What
a glory and consecration of the martyrdom! Where shall we find a more
triumphant vindication and supreme victory of spirit over matter?
"I see, I see,
How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes
These flames that would eclipse it dark as blots
Of candle-light against the blazing sun.
We die a thousand deaths,--drown, bleed, and burn.
Our ashes are dispersed unto the winds.
Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed,
The fire refuseth to consume.
. . . . . . . . .
Even as we die in honor, from our death
Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives,
Brave through our bright example, virtuous
Lest our great memory fall in disrepute."
The "Dance to Death" was published, along with other poems and
translations from the Hebrew poets of mediaeval Spain, in a small column
entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In profound
veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the illustrious
writer who did most among the artists of our day towards elevating and
ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality."
For this was the idea that had caught the imagination of Emma Lazarus,
--a restored and independent nationality and repatriation in Palestine.
In her article in "The Century" of February, 1883, on the "Jewish
Problem," she says:--
"I am fully persuaded that all suggested solutions other
than this are but temporary palliatives.... The idea
formulated by George Eliot has already sunk into the minds
of many Jewish enthusiasts, and it germinates with miraculous
rapidity. 'The idea that I am possessed with,' says Deronda,
'is that of restoring a political existence to my people;
making them a nation again, giving them a national centre,
such as the English have, though they, too, are scattered
over the face of the globe. That task which presents itself
to me as a duty.... I am resolved to devote my life to
it. AT THE LEAST, I MAY AWAKEN A MOVEMENT IN OTHER MINDS
SUCH HAS BEEN AWAKENED IN MY OWN.' Could the noble
prophetess who wrote the above words have lived but till to-
day to see the ever-increasing necessity of adopting her
inspired counsel,...she would have been herself astonished
at the flame enkindled by her seed of fire, and the practical
shape which the movement projected by her poetic vision is
beginning to assume."
In November of 1882 appeared her first "Epistle to the Hebrews,"--one
of a series of articles written for the "American Hebrew," published
weekly through several months. Addressing herself now to a Jewish
audience, she sets forth without reserve her views and hopes for
Judaism, now passionately holding up the mirror for the shortcomings and
peculiarities of her race. She says:--
"Every student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have
in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive
voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification
of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root.
A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves
in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are
the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and
customs they adopt.... Influenced by the same causes, they
represent the same results; but the deeper lights and shadows
of the Oriental temperament throw their failings, as well as
their virtues, into more prominent relief."
In drawing the epistles to a close, February 24, 1883, she thus
summarizes the special objects she has had in view:--
"My chief aim has been to contribute my mite towards arousing
that spirit of Jewish enthusiasm which might manifest itself:
First, in a return to varied pursuits and broad system of
physical and intellectual education adopted by our ancestors;
Second, in a more fraternal and practical movement towards
alleviating the sufferings of oppressed Jews in countries less
favored than our own; Third, in a closer and wider study of
Hebrew literature and history and finally, in a truer recognition
of the large principals of religion, liberty, and law upon
which Judaism is founded, and which should draw into harmonious
unity Jews of every shade of opinion."
Her interest in Jewish affairs was at its height when she planned a
visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15,
1883, she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have
difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying
in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new world.
From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight. At sea she
writes:--
"Our last day on board ship was a vision of beauty from
morning till night,--the sea like a mirror and the sky
dazzling with light. In the afternoon we passed a ship
in full sail, near enough to exchange salutes and cheers.
After tossing about for six days without seeing a human
being, except those on our vessel, even this was a sensation.
Then an hour or two before sunset came the great sensation
of--land! At first, nothing but a shadow on the far horizon,
like the ghost of a ship; two or three widely scattered rocks
which were the promontories of Ireland, and sooner than we
expected we were steaming along low-lying purple hills."
The journey to Chester gives her "the first glimpse of mellow
England,"--a surprise which is yet no surprise, so well known and
familiar does it appear. Then Chester, with its quaint, picturesque
streets, "like the scene of a Walter Scott novel, the cathedral planted
in greenness, and the clear, gray river where a boatful of scarlet
dragoons goes gliding by." Everything is a picture for her special
benefit. She "drinks in, at every sense, the sights, sounds, and smells,
and the unimaginable beauty of it all." Then the bewilderment of London,
and a whirl of people, sights, and impressions. She was received with
great distinction by the Jews, and many of the leading men among them
warmly advocated her views. But it was not alone from her own people
that she met with exceptional consideration. She had the privilege
of seeing many of the most eminent personages of the day, all of whom
honored her with special and personal regard. There was, no doubt,
something that strongly attracted people to her at this time,--the force
of her intellect at once made itself felt, while at the same time the
unaltered simplicity and modesty of her character, and her readiness and
freshness of enthusiasm, kept her still almost like a child.
She makes a flying visit to Paris, where she happens to be on the 14th
of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile, and of the
beginning of the republic; she drives to Versailles, "that gorgeous
shell of royalty, where the crowd who celebrate the birth of the
republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the most
sacred rooms of the king.... There are ruins on every side in Paris,"
she says; "ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the Revolution; it is
terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with fire and blood."
Such was Paris to her then, and she hastens back to her beloved London,
starting from there on the tour through England that has been mapped
out for her. "A Day in Surrey with William Morris," published in "The
Century Magazine," describes her visit to Merton Abbey, the old Norman
monastery, converted into a model factory by the poet-humanitarian,
who himself received her as his guest, conducted her all over the
picturesque building and garden, and explained to her his views of art
and his aims for the people.
She drives through Kent, "where the fields, valleys, and slopes are
garlanded with hops and ablaze with scarlet poppies." Then Canterbury,
Windsor, and Oxford, Stratford, Warwick, the valley of the Wye, Wells,
Exeter, and Salisbury,--cathedral after cathedral. Back to London,
and then north through York, Durham, and Edinburgh, and on the 15th of
September she sails for home. We have merely named the names, for it is
impossible to convey an idea of the delight and importance of this trip,
"a crescendo of enjoyment," as she herself calls it. Long after, in
strange, dark hours of suffering, these pictures of travel arose before
her, vivid and tragic even in their hold and spell upon her.
The winter of 1883-84 was not especially productive. She wrote a few
reminiscences of her journey and occasional poems on the Jewish themes,
which appeared in the "American Hebrew;" but for the most part gave
herself up to quiet retrospect and enjoyment with her friends of the
life she had had a glimpse of, and the experience she had stored,--a
restful, happy period. In August of the same year she was stricken with
a severe and dangerous malady, from which she slowly recovered, only to
go through a terrible ordeal and affliction. Her father's health, which
had long been failing, now broke down completely, and the whole winter
was one long strain of acute anxiety, which culminated in his death,
in March, 1885. The blow was a crushing one for Emma. Truly, the silver
cord was loosed, and the golden bowl broken. Life lost its meaning and
charm. Her father's sympathy and pride in her work had been her chief
incentive and ambition, and had spurred her on when her own confidence
and spirit failed. Never afterwards did she find complete and
spontaneous expression. She decided to go abroad as the best means
of regaining composure and strength and sailed once more in May for
England, where she was welcomed now by the friends she had made, almost
as to another home. She spent the summer very quietly at Richmond, an
ideally beautiful spot in Yorkshire, where she soon felt the beneficial
influence of her peaceful surroundings. "The very air seems to rest one
here," she writes; and inspired by the romantic loveliness of the place,
she even composed the first few chapters of a novel, begun with a good
deal of dash and vigor, but soon abandoned, for she was still struggling
with depression and gloom.
"I have neither ability, energy, nor purpose," she writes. "It is
impossible to do anything, so I am forced to set it aside for the
present; whether to take it up again or not in the future remains to be
seen."
In the autumn she goes on the Continent, visiting the Hague, which
"completely fascinates" her, and where she feels "stronger and more
cheerful" than she has "for many a day." Then Paris, which this time
amazes her "with its splendor and magnificence. All the ghosts of the
Revolution are somehow laid," she writes, and she spends six weeks
here enjoying to the full the gorgeous autumn weather, the sights, the
picture galleries, the bookshops, the whole brilliant panorama of the
life; and early in December she starts for Italy.
And now once more we come upon that keen zest of enjoyment, that
pure desire and delight of the eyes, which are the prerogative of the
poet,--Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,--what a rapture
and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the very land of
beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow colours it all; no
mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of purple and scarlet
and emerald; "each tower, castle, and village shining like a jewel; the
olive, the fig, and at your feet the roses, growing in mid-December."
A day in Pisa seems like a week, so crowded is it with sensations and
unforgettable pictures. Then a month in Florence, which is still more
entrancing with its inexhaustible treasures of beauty and art; and
finally Rome, the climax of it all,--
"wiping out all other places and impressions, and opening
a whole new world of sensations. I am wild with the
excitement of this tremendous place. I have been here a
week, and have seen the Vatican and the Capitoline Museums,
and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's, besides the ruins
on the streets and on the hills, and the graves of Shelley
and Keats.
"It is all heart-breaking. I don't only mean those beautiful
graves, overgrown with acanthus and violets, but the mutilated
arches and columns and dumb appealing fragments looming up in
the glowing sunshine under the Roman blue sky."
True to her old attractions, it is pagan Rome that appeals to her most
strongly,--
"and the far-away past, that seems so sad and strange and
near. I am even out of humor with pictures; a bit of broken
stone or a fragment of a bas-relief, or a Corinthian column
standing out against this lapis-lazuli sky, or a tremendous
arch, are the only things I can look at for the moment,--
except the Sistine Chapel, which is as gigantic as the rest,
and forces itself upon you with equal might."
Already, in February, spring is in the air; "the almond-trees are in
bloom, violets cover the grass, and oh! the divine, the celestial, the
unheard-of beauty of it all!" It is almost a pang for her, "with its
strange mixture of longing and regret and delight," and in the midst
of it she says, "I have to exert all my strength not to lose myself in
morbidness and depression."
Early in March she leaves Rome, consoled with the thought of returning
the following winter. In June she was in England again, and spent the
summer at Malvern. Disease was no doubt already beginning to prey upon
her, for she was oppressed at times by a languor and heaviness amounting
almost to lethargy. When she returned to London, however, in September,
she felt quite well again, and started for another tour in Holland,
which she enjoyed as much as before. She then settled in Paris, to await
the time when she could return to Italy. But she was attacked at once
with grave and alarming symptoms, that betokened a fatal end to her
malady. Entirely ignorant, however, of the danger that threatened her,
she kept up courage and hope, made plans for the journey, and looked
forward to setting out at any moment. But the weeks passed and the
months also; slowly and gradually the hope faded. The journey to Italy
must be given up; she was not in condition to be brought home, and she
reluctantly resigned herself to remain where she was and "convalesce,"
as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy,
which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in
Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the
Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could
not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed
to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself
expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out
into life," and in the spring she rallied sufficiently to take a few
drives and to sit on the balcony of her apartment. She came back to
life with a feverish sort of thirst and avidity. "No such cure for
pessimism," she says, "as a severe illness; the simplest pleasures are
enough,--to breathe the air and see the sun."
Many plans were made for leaving Paris, but it was finally decided to
risk the ocean voyage and bring her home, and accordingly she sailed
July 23rd, arriving in New York on the last day of that month.
She did not rally after this; and now began her long agony, full of
every kind of suffering, mental and physical. Only her intellect seemed
kindled anew, and none but those who saw her during the last supreme
ordeal can realize that wonderful flash and fire of the spirit before
its extinction. Never did she appear so brilliant. Wasted to a shadow,
and between acute attacks of pain, she talked about art, poetry, the
scenes of travel, of which her brain was so full, and the phases of her
own condition, with an eloquence for which even those who knew her best
were quite unprepared. Every faculty seemed sharpened and every sense
quickened as the "strong deliveress" approached, and the ardent soul was
released from the frame that could no longer contain it.
We cannot restrain a feeling of suddenness and incompleteness and a
natural pang of wonder and regret for a life so richly and so vitally
endowed thus cut off in its prime. But for us it is not fitting to
question or repine, but rather to rejoice in the rare possession that
we hold. What is any life, even the most rounded and complete, but a
fragment and a hint? What Emma Lazarus might have accomplished, had she
been spared, it is idle and even ungrateful to speculate. What she did
accomplish has real and peculiar significance. It is the privilege of
a favored few that every fact and circumstance of their individuality
shall add lustre and value to what they achieve. To be born a Jewess was
a distinction for Emma Lazarus, and she in turn conferred distinction
upon her race. To be born a woman also lends a grace and a subtle
magnetism to her influence. Nowhere is there contradiction or
incongruity. Her works bear the imprint of her character, and her
character of her works; the same directness and honesty, the same limpid
purity of tone, and the same atmosphere of things refined and beautiful.
The vulgar, the false, and the ignoble,--she scarcely comprehended them,
while on every side she was open and ready to take in and respond to
whatever can adorn and enrich life. Literature was no mere "profession"
for her, which shut out other possibilities; it was only a free, wide
horizon and background for culture. She was passionately devoted to
music, which inspired some of her best poems; and during the last years
of her life, in hours of intense physical suffering, she found relief
and consolation in listening to the strains of Bach and Beethoven. When
she went abroad, painting was revealed to her, and she threw herself
with the same ardor and enthusiasm into the study of the great masters;
her last work (left unfinished) was a critical analysis of the genius
and personality of Rembrandt.
And now, at the end, we ask, Has the grave really closed over all these
gifts? Has that eager, passionate striving ceased, and "is the rest
silence?"
Who knows? But would we break, if we could, that repose, that silence
and mystery and peace everlasting?
THE NEW YEAR.
ROSH-HASHANAH, 5643.
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies,--
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?
For never yet, since on the holy height,
The Temple's marble walls of white and green
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world's light
Went out in darkness,--never was the year
Greater with portent and with promise seen,
Than this eve now and here.
Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent
Hath been enlarged unto earth's farthest rim.
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went,
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave,
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him,
Mighty to slay and save.
High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.
In two divided streams the exiles part,
One rolling homeward to its ancient source,
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart.
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled,
Each separate soul contains the nation's force,
And both embrace the world.
Kindle the silver candle's seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
THE CROWING OF THE RED COCK.
Across the Eastern sky has glowed
The flicker of a blood-red dawn,
Once more the clarion cock has crowed,
Once more the sword of Christ is drawn.
A million burning rooftrees light
The world-wide path of Israel's flight.
Where is the Hebrew's fatherland?
The folk of Christ is sore bestead;
The Son of Man is bruised and banned,
Nor finds whereon to lay his head.
His cup is gall, his meat is tears,
His passion lasts a thousand years.
Each crime that wakes in man the beast,
Is visited upon his kind.
The lust of mobs, the greed of priest,
The tyranny of kings, combined
To root his seed from earth again,
His record is one cry of pain.
When the long roll of Christian guilt
Against his sires and kin is known,
The flood of tears, the life-blood spilt
The agony of ages shown,
What oceans can the stain remove,
From Christian law and Christian love?
Nay, close the book; not now, not here,
The hideous tale of sin narrate,
Reechoing in the martyr's ear,
Even he might nurse revengeful hate,
Even he might turn in wrath sublime,
With blood for blood and crime for crime.
Coward? Not he, who faces death,
Who singly against worlds has fought,
For what? A name he may not breathe,
For liberty of prayer and thought.
The angry sword he will not whet,
His nobler task is--to forget.
IN EXILE.
"Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We
live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take
a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs."--Extract from
a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas.
Twilight is here, soft breezes bow the grass,
Day's sounds of various toil break slowly off,
The yoke-freed oxen low, the patient ass
Dips his dry nostril in the cool, deep trough.
Up from the prairie the tanned herdsmen pass
With frothy pails, guiding with voices rough
Their udder-lightened kine. Fresh smells of earth,
The rich, black furrows of the glebe send forth.
After the Southern day of heavy toil,
How good to lie, with limbs relaxed, brows bare
To evening's fan, and watch the smoke-wreaths coil
Up from one's pipe-stem through the rayless air.
So deem these unused tillers of the soil,
Who stretched beneath the shadowing oak tree, stare
Peacefully on the star-unfolding skies,
And name their life unbroken paradise.
The hounded stag that has escaped the pack,
And pants at ease within a thick-leaved dell;
The unimprisoned bird that finds the track
Through sun-bathed space, to where his fellows dwell;
The martyr, granted respite from the rack,
The death-doomed victim pardoned from his cell,--
Such only know the joy these exiles gain,--
Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.
Strange faces theirs, wherethrough the Orient sun
Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin.
Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run
From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin.
And over all the seal is stamped thereon
Of anguish branded by a world of sin,
In fire and blood through ages on their name,
Their seal of glory and the Gentiles' shame.
Freedom to love the law that Moses brought,
To sing the songs of David, and to think
The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught,
Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink
The universal air--for this they sought
Refuge o'er wave and continent, to link
Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain,
And truth's perpetual lamp forbid to wane.
Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song
Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.
They sing the conquest of the spirit strong,
The soul that wrests the victory from pain;
The noble joys of manhood that belong
To comrades and to brothers. In their strain
Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears,
And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears.
IN MEMORIAM--REV. J. J. LYONS.
ROSH-HASHANAH, 5638.
The golden harvest-tide is here, the corn
Bows its proud tops beneath the reaper's hand.
Ripe orchards' plenteous yields enrich the land;
Bring the first fruits and offer them this morn,
With the stored sweetness of all summer hours,
The amber honey sucked from myriad flowers,
And sacrifice your best first fruits to-day,
With fainting hearts and hands forespent with toil,
Offer the mellow harvest's splendid spoil,
To Him who gives and Him who takes away.
Bring timbrels, bring the harp of sweet accord,
And in a pleasant psalm your voice attune,
And blow the cornet greeting the new moon.
Sing, holy, holy, holy, is the Lord,
Who killeth and who quickeneth again,
Who woundeth and who healeth mortal pain,
Whose hand afflicts us, and who sends us peace.
Hail thou slim arc of promise in the West,
Thou pledge of certain plenty, peace, and rest.
With the spent year, may the year's sorrows cease.
For there is mourning now in Israel,
The crown, the garland of the branching tree
Is plucked and withered. Ripe of years was he.
The priest, the good old man who wrought so well
Upon his chosen globe. For he was one
Who at his seed-plot toiled through rain and sun.
Morn found him not as one who slumbereth,
Noon saw him faithful, and the restful night
Stole o'er him at his labors to requite
The just man's service with the just man's death.
What shall be said when such as he do pass?
Go to the hill-side, neath the cypress-trees,
Fall midst that peopled silence on your knees,
And weep that man must wither as the grass.
But mourn him not, whose blameless life complete
Rounded its perfect orb, whose sleep is sweet,
Whom we must follow, but may not recall.
Salute with solemn trumpets the New Year,
And offer honeyed fruits as were he here,
Though ye be sick with wormwood and with gall.
THE VALLEY OF BACA.
PSALM LXXXIV.
A brackish lake is there with bitter pools
Anigh its margin, brushed by heavy trees.
A piping wind the narrow valley cools,
Fretting the willows and the cypresses.
Gray skies above, and in the gloomy space
An awful presence hath its dwelling-place.
I saw a youth pass down that vale of tears;
His head was circled with a crown of thorn,
His form was bowed as by the weight of years,
His wayworn feet by stones were cut and torn.
His eyes were such as have beheld the sword
Of terror of the angel of the Lord.
He passed, and clouds and shadows and thick haze
Fell and encompassed him. I might not see
What hand upheld him in those dismal ways,
Wherethrough he staggered with his misery.
The creeping mists that trooped and spread around,
The smitten head and writhing form enwound.
Then slow and gradual but sure they rose,
Those clinging vapors blotting out the sky.
The youth had fallen not, his viewless foes
Discomfited, had left the victory
Unto the heart that fainted not nor failed,
But from the hill-tops its salvation hailed.
I looked at him in dread lest I should see,
The anguish of the struggle in his eyes;
And lo, great peace was there! Triumphantly
The sunshine crowned him from the sacred skies.
"From strength to strength he goes," he leaves beneath
The valley of the shadow and of death.
"Thrice blest who passing through that vale of Tears,
Makes it a well,"--and draws life-nourishment
From those death-bitter drops. No grief, no fears
Assail him further, he may scorn the event.
For naught hath power to swerve the steadfast soul
Within that valley broken and made whole.
THE BANNER OF THE JEW.
Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
His five-fold lion-lineage:
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.*
From Mizpeh's mountain-ridge they saw
Jerusalem's empty streets, her shrine
Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law,
With idol and with pagan sign.
Mourners in tattered black were there,
With ashes sprinkled on their hair.
Then from the stony peak there rang
A blast to ope the graves: down poured
The Maccabean clan, who sang
Their battle-anthem to the Lord.
Five heroes lead, and following, see,
Ten thousand rush to victory!
Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleepers high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance--but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.
Oh deem not dead that martial fire,
Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses' law and David's lyre,
Your ancient strength remains unbent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW!
A rag, a mock at first--erelong,
When men have bled and women wept,
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it, and to save.
Strike! for the brave revere the brave!
*The sons of Mattathias--Jonanthan, John, Eleazer,
Simon (also called the Jewel), and Jonas, the Prince
THE GUARDIAN OF THE RED DISK.
Spoken by a Citizen of Malta--1300.
A curious title held in high repute,
One among many honors, thickly strewn
On my lord Bishop's head, his grace of Malta.
Nobly he bears them all,--with tact, skill, zeal,
Fulfills each special office, vast or slight,
Nor slurs the least minutia,--therewithal
Wears such a stately aspect of command,
Broad-checked, broad-chested, reverend, sanctified,
Haloed with white about the tonsure's rim,
With dropped lids o'er the piercing Spanish eyes
(Lynx-keen, I warrant, to spy out heresy);
Tall, massive form, o'ertowering all in presence,
Or ere they kneel to kiss the large white hand.
His looks sustain his deeds,--the perfect prelate,
Whose void chair shall be taken, but not filled.
You know not, who are foreign to the isle,
Haply, what this Red Disk may be, he guards.
'T is the bright blotch, big as the Royal seal,
Branded beneath the beard of every Jew.
These vermin so infest the isle, so slide
Into all byways, highways that may lead
Direct or roundabout to wealth or power,
Some plain, plump mark was needed, to protect
From the degrading contact Christian folk.
The evil had grown monstrous: certain Jews
Wore such a haughty air, had so refined,
With super-subtile arts, strict, monkish lives,
And studious habit, the coarse Hebrew type,
One might have elbowed in the public mart
Iscariot,--nor suspected one's soul-peril.
Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think!
We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint,
Praise be our good Lord Bishop! He keeps count
Of every Jew, and prints on cheek or chin
The scarlet stamp of separateness, of shame.
No beard, blue-black, grizzled or Judas-colored,
May hide that damning little wafer-flame.
When one appears therewith, the urchins know
Good sport's at hand; they fling their stones and mud,
Sure of their game. But most the wisdom shows
Upon the unbelievers' selves; they learn
Their proper rank; crouch, cringe, and hide,--lay by
Their insolence of self-esteem; no more
Flaunt forth in rich attire, but in dull weeds,
Slovenly donned, would slink past unobserved;
Bow servile necks and crook obsequious knees,
Chin sunk in hollow chest, eyes fixed on earth
Or blinking sidewise, but to apprehend
Whether or not the hated spot be spied.
I warrant my Lord Bishop has full hands,
Guarding the Red Disk--lest one rogue escape!
THE NEW EZEKIEL.
What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel, whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these Bones revive,
Open the graves and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said. Again
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The Spirit is not dead, proclaim the word,
Where lay dead bones, a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.
THE CHOICE.
I saw in dream the spirits unbegot,
Veiled, floating phantoms, lost in twilight space;
For one the hour had struck, he paused; the place
Rang with an awful Voice:
"Soul, choose thy lot!
Two paths are offered; that, in velvet-flower,
Slopes easily to every earthly prize.
Follow the multitude and bind thine eyes,
Thou and thy sons' sons shall have peace with power.
This narrow track skirts the abysmal verge,
Here shalt thou stumble, totter, weep and bleed,
All men shall hate and hound thee and thy seed,
Thy portion be the wound, the stripe, the scourge.
But in thy hand I place my lamp for light,
Thy blood shall be the witness of my Law,
Choose now for all the ages!"
Then I saw
The unveiled spirit, grown divinely bright,
Choose the grim path. He turned, I knew full well
The pale, great martyr-forehead shadowy-curled,
The glowing eyes that had renounced the world,
Disgraced, despised, immortal Israel.
THE WORLD'S JUSTICE.
If the sudden tidings came
That on some far, foreign coast,
Buried ages long from fame,
Had been found a remnant lost
Of that hoary race who dwelt
By the golden Nile divine,
Spake the Pharaoh's tongue and knelt
At the moon-crowned Isis' shrine--
How at reverend Egypt's feet,
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
If the sudden news were known,
That anigh the desert-place
Where once blossomed Babylon,
Scions of a mighty race
Still survived, of giant build,
Huntsmen, warriors, priest and sage,
Whose ancestral fame had filled,
Trumpet-tongued, the earlier age,
How at old Assyria's feet
Pilgrims from all lands would meet!
Yet when Egypt's self was young,
And Assyria's bloom unworn,
Ere the mythic Homer sung,
Ere the gods of Greece were born,
Lived the nation of one God,
Priests of freedom, sons of Shem,
Never quelled by yoke or rod,
Founders of Jerusalem--
Is there one abides to-day,
Seeker of dead cities, say!
Answer, now as then, THEY ARE;
Scattered broadcast o'er the lands,
Knit in spirit nigh and far,
With indissoluble bands.
Half the world adores their God,
They the living law proclaim,
And their guerdon is--the rod,
Stripes and scourgings, death and shame.
Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
THE SUPREME SACRIFICE.
Well-nigh two thousand years hath Israel
Suffered the scorn of man for love of God;
Endured the outlaw's ban, the yoke, the rod,
With perfect patience. Empires rose and fell,
Around him Nebo was adored and Bel;
Edom was drunk with victory, and trod
On his high places, while the sacred sod
Was desecrated by the infidel.
His faith proved steadfast, without breach or flaw,
But now the last renouncement is required.
His truth prevails, his God is God, his Law
Is found the wisdom most to be desired.
Not his the glory! He, maligned, misknown,
Bows his meek head, and says, "Thy will be done!"
THE FEAST OF LIGHTS.
Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.
Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
From one heroic stock, one seed divine.
Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem,
The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
Whose praise is: "He received the perishing."
They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass
Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted--who had flung
Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,
Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame,
Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
Music and revelry wed day with night.
Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm?
Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!
GIFTS.
"O World-God, give me Wealth!" the Egyptian cried.
His prayer was granted. High as heaven, behold
Palace and Pyramid; the brimming tide
Of lavish Nile washed all his land with gold.
Armies of slaves toiled ant-wise at his feet,
World-circling traffic roared through mart and street,
His priests were gods, his spice-balmed kings enshrined,
Set death at naught in rock-ribbed charnels deep.
Seek Pharaoh's race to-day and ye shall find
Rust and the moth, silence and dusty sleep.
"O World-God, give me beauty!" cried the Greek.
His prayer was granted. All the earth became
Plastic and vocal to his sense; each peak,
Each grove, each stream, quick with Promethean flame,
Peopled the world with imaged grace and light.
The lyre was his, and his the breathing might
Of the immortal marble, his the play
Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue.
Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day
A broken column and a lute unstrung.
"O World-God, give me Power!" the Roman cried.
His prayer was granted. The vast world was chained
A captive to the chariot of his pride.
The blood of myriad provinces was drained
To feed that fierce, insatiable red heart.
Invulnerably bulwarked every part
With serried legions and with close-meshed Code,
Within, the burrowing worm had gnawed its home,
A roofless ruin stands where once abode
The imperial race of everlasting Rome.
"O Godhead, give me Truth!" the Hebrew cried.
His prayer was granted; he became the slave
Of the Idea, a pilgrim far and wide,
Cursed, hated, spurned, and scourged with none to save.
The Pharaohs knew him, and when Greece beheld,
His wisdom wore the hoary crown of Eld.
Beauty he hath forsworn, and wealth and power.
Seek him to-day, and find in every land.
No fire consumes him, neither floods devour;
Immortal through the lamp within his hand.
BAR KOCHBA.
Weep, Israel! your tardy meed outpour
Of grateful homage on his fallen head,
That never coronal of triumph wore,
Untombed, dishonored, and unchapleted.
If Victory makes the hero, raw Success
The stamp of virtue, unremembered
Be then the desperate strife, the storm and stress
Of the last Warrior Jew. But if the man
Who dies for freedom, loving all things less,
Against world-legions, mustering his poor clan;
The weak, the wronged, the miserable, to send
Their death-cry's protest through the ages' span--
If such an one be worthy, ye shall lend
Eternal thanks to him, eternal praise.
Nobler the conquered than the conqueror's end!
1492.
Thou two-faced year, Mother of Change and Fate,
Didst weep when Spain cast forth with flaming sword,
The children of the prophets of the Lord,
Prince, priest, and people, spurned by zealot hate.
Hounded from sea to sea, from state to state,
The West refused them, and the East abhorred.
No anchorage the known world could afford,
Close-locked was every port, barred every gate.
Then smiling, thou unveil'dst, O two-faced year,
A virgin world where doors of sunset part,
Saying, "Ho, all who weary, enter here!
There falls each ancient barrier that the art
Of race or creed or rank devised, to rear
Grim bulwarked hatred between heart and heart!"
1883.
THE BIRTH OF MAN.
A Legend of the Talmud.
I.
When angels visit earth, the messengers
Of God's decree, they come as lightning, wind:
Before the throne, they all are living fire.
There stand four rows of angels--to the right
The hosts of Michael, Gabriel's to the left,
Before, the troop of Ariel, and behind,
The ranks of Raphael; all, with one accord,
Chanting the glory of the Everlasting.
Upon the high and holy throne there rests,
Invisible, the Majesty of God.
About his brows the crown of mystery
Whereon the sacred letters are engraved
Of the unutterable Name. He grasps
A sceptre of keen fire; the universe
Is compassed in His glance; at His right hand
Life stands, and at His left hand standeth Death.
II.
Lo, the divine idea of making man
Had spread abroad among the heavenly hosts;
And all at once before the immortal throne
Pressed troops of angels and of seraphim,
With minds opposed, and contradicting cries:
"Fulfill, great Father, thine exalted thought!
Create and give unto the earth her king!"
"Cease, cease, Almighty God! create no more!"
And suddenly upon the heavenly sphere
Deep silence fell; before the immortal throne
The angel Mercy knelt, and thus he spoke:
"Fulfill, great Father, thine exalted thought!
Create the likeness of thyself on earth.
In this new creature I will breathe the spirit
Of a divine compassion; he shall be
Thy fairest image in the universe."
But to his words the angel Peace replied,
With heavy sobs: "My spirit was outspread,
Oh God, on thy creation, and all things
Were sweetly bound in gracious harmony.
But man, this strange new being, everywhere
Shall bring confusion, trouble, discord, war."
"Avenger of injustice and of crime,"
Exclaimed the angel Justice, "he shall be
Subject to me, and peace shall bloom again.
Create, oh Lord, create!" "Father of truth,"
Implored with tears the angel Truth, "Thou bring'st
Upon the earth the father of all lies!"
And over the celestial faces gloomed
A cloud of grief, and stillness deep prevailed.
Then from the midst of that abyss of light
Whence sprang the eternal throne, these words rang forth:
"Be comforted, my daughter! Thee I send
To be companion unto man on earth."
And all the angels cried, lamenting loud:
"Thou robbest heaven of her fairest gem.
Truth! seal of all thy thoughts, Almighty God,
The richest jewel that adorns thy crown."
From the abyss of glory rang the voice:
"From heaven to earth, from earth once more to heaven,
Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight
And soar again, an everlasting link
Between the world and sky."
And man was born.
RASCHI IN PRAGUE.
Raschi of Troyes, the Moon of Israel,
The authoritative Talmudist, returned
From his wide wanderings under many skies,
To all the synagogues of the Orient,
Through Spain and Italy, the isles of Greece,
Beautiful, dolorous, sacred Palestine,
Dead, obelisked Egypt, floral, musk-breathed Persia,
Laughing with bloom, across the Caucasus,
The interminable sameness of bare steppes,
Through dark luxuriance of Bohemian woods,
And issuing on the broad, bright Moldau vale,
Entered the gates of Prague. Here, too, his fame,
Being winged, preceded him. His people swarmed
Like bees to gather the rich honey-dew
Of learning from his lips. Amazement filled
All eyes beholding him. No hoary sage,
He who had sat in Egypt at the feet
Of Moses ben-Maimuni, called him friend;
Raschi the scholiast, poet, and physician,
Who bore the ponderous Bible's storied wisdom,
The Mischna's tangled lore at tip of tongue,
Light as a garland on a lance, appeared
In the just-ripened glory of a man.
From his clear eye youth flamed magnificent;
Force, masked by grace, moved in his balanced frame;
An intellectual, virile beauty reigned
Dominant on domed brow, on fine, firm lips,
An eagle profile cut in gilded bronze,
Strong, delicate as a head upon a coin,
While, as an aureole crowns a burning lamp,
Above all beauty of the body and brain
Shone beauty of a soul benign with love.
Even as a tawny flock of huddled sheep,
Grazing each other's heels, urged by one will,
With bleat and baa following the wether's lead,
Or the wise shepherd, so o'er the Moldau bridge
Trotted the throng of yellow-caftaned Jews,
Chattering, hustling, shuffling. At their head
Marched Rabbi Jochanan ben-Eleazar,
High priest in Prague, oldest and most revered,
To greet the star of Israel. As a father
Yearns toward his son, so toward the noble Raschi
Leapt at first sight the patriarch's fresh old heart.
"My home be thine in Prague! Be thou my son,
Who have no offspring save one simple girl.
See, glorious youth, who dost renew the days
Of David and of Samuel, early graced
With God's anointing oil, how Israel
Delights to honor who hath honored him."
Then Raschi, though he felt a ball of fire
Globe itself in his throat, maintained his calm,
His cheek's opaque, swart pallor while he kissed
Silent the Rabbi's withered hand, and bowed
Divinely humble, his exalted head
Craving the benison.
For each who asked
He had the word of counsel, comfort, help;
For all, rich eloquence of thanks. His voice,
Even and grave, thrilled secret chords and set
Plain speech to music. Certain folk were there
Sick in the body, dragging painful limbs,
To the physician. These he solaced first,
With healing touch, with simples from his pouch,
Warming and lulling, best with promises
Of constant service till their ills were cured.
And some, gray-bearded, bald, and curved with age,
Blear-eyed from poring over lines obscure
And knotty riddles of the Talmud, brought
Their problems to this youth, who cleared and solved,
Yielding prompt answer to a lifetime's search.
Then, followed, pushed by his obsequious tribe,
Who fain had pedestaled him on their backs,
Hemming his steps, choking the airs of heaven
With their oppressive honors, he advanced,
Midst shouts, tumultuous welcomes, kisses showered
Upon his road-stained garments, through Prague's streets,
Gaped at by Gentiles, hissed at and reviled,
But no whit altering his majestic mien
For overwhelming plaudits or contempt.
Glad tidings Raschi brought from West and East
Of thriving synagogues, of famous men,
And flourishing academies. In Rome
The Papal treasurer was a pious Jew,
Rabbi Jehiel, neath whose patronage
Prospered a noble school. Two hundred Jews
Dwelt free and paid no tributary mark.
Three hundred lived in peace at Capua,
Shepherded by the learned Rabbi David,
A prince of Israel. In Babylon
The Jews established their Academy.
Another still in Bagdad, from whose chair
Preached the great rabbi, Samuel Ha-levi,
Versed in the written and the oral law,
Who blindfold could repeat the whole vast text
Of Mischna and Gemara. On the banks
Of Eden-born Euphrates, one day's ride
From Bagdad, Raschi found in the wilderness,
Which once was Babylon, Ezekiel's tomb.
Thrice ten perpetual lamps starred the dim shrine,
Two hundred sentinels held the sleepless vigil,
Receiving offerings. At the Feast of Booths
Here crowded Jews by thousands, out of Persia,
From all the neighboring lands, to celebrate
The glorious memories of the golden days.
Ten thousand Jews with their Academy
Damascus boasted, while in Cairo shone
The pearl, the crown of Israel, ben-Maimuni,
Physician at the Court of Saladin,
The second Moses, gathering at his feet
Sages from all the world.
As Raschi spake,
Forgetting or ignoring the chief shrine,
The Exile's Home, whereunto yearned all hearts,
All ears were strained for tidings. Some one asked:
"What of Jerusalem? Speak to us of Zion."
The light died from his eyes. From depths profound
Issued his grave, great voice: "Alas for Zion!
Verily is she fallen! Where our race
Dictated to the nations, not a handful,
Nay, not a score, not ten, not two abide!
One, only one, one solitary Jew,
The Rabbi Abraham Haceba, flits
Ghostlike amid the ruins; every year
Beggars himself to pay the idolaters
The costly tax for leave to hold a-gape
His heart's live wound; to weep, a mendicant,
Amidst the crumbled stones of palaces
Where reigned his ancestors, upon the graves
Where sleep the priests, the prophets, and the kings
Who were his forefathers. Ask me no more!"
Now, when the French Jew's advent was proclaimed,
And his tumultuous greeting, envious growls
And ominous eyebeams threatened storm in Prague.
"Who may this miracle of learning be?
The Anti-Christ! The century-long-awaited,
The hourly-hoped Messiah, come at last!
Else dared they never wax so arrogant,
Flaunting their monstrous joy in Christian eyes,
And strutting peacock-like, with hideous screams,
Who are wont to crawl, mute reptiles underfoot."
A stone or two flung at some servile form,
Liveried in the yellow gaberdine
(With secret happiness but half suppressed
On features cast for misery), served at first
For chance expression of the rabble's hate;
But, swelling like a snow-ball rolled along
By mischief-plotting boys, the rage increased,
Grew to a mighty mass, until it reached
The palace of Duke Vladislaw. He heard
With righteous wrath his injured subjects' charge
Against presumptuous aliens: how these blocked
His avenues, his bridges; bared to the sun
The canker-taint of Prague's obscurest coigne;
Paraded past the churches of the Lord
One who denied Him, one by them hailed Christ.
Enough! This cloud, no bigger than one's hand,
Gains overweening bulk. Prague harbored, first,
Out of contemptuous ruth, a wretched band
Of outcast paupers, gave them leave to ply
Their money-lending trade, and leased them land
On all too facile terms. Behold! to-day,
Like leeches bloated with the people's blood,
They batten on Bohemia's poverty;
They breed and grow; like adders, spit back hate
And venomed perfidy for Christian love.
Thereat the Duke, urged by wise counsellors--
Narzerad the statesman (half whose wealth was pledged
To the usurers), abetted by the priest,
Bishop of Olmutz, who had visited
The Holy Sepulchre, whose long, full life
Was one clean record of pure piety--
The Duke, I say, by these persuasive tongues,
Coaxed to his darling aim, forbade his guards
To hinder the just anger of his town,
And ordered to be led in chains to him
The pilgrim and his host.
At noontide meal
Raschi sat, full of peace, with Jochanan,
And the sole daughter of the house, Rebekah,
Young, beautiful as her namesake when she brought
Her firm, frail pitcher balanced on her neck
Unto the well, and gave the stranger drink,
And gave his camels drink. The servant set
The sparkling jar's refreshment from his lips,
And saw the virgin's face, bright as the moon,
Beam from the curled luxuriance of black locks,
And cast-back linen veil's soft-folded cloud,
Then put the golden ear-ring by her cheek,
The bracelets on her hands, his master's pledge,
Isaac's betrothal gift, whom she should wed,
And be the mother of millions--one whose seed
Dwells in the gates of those which hate them.
So
Yearned Raschi to adorn the radiant girl
Who sat at board before him, nor dared lift
Shy, heavy lids from pupils black as grapes
That dart the imprisoned sunshine from their core.
But in her ears keen sense was born to catch,
And in her heart strange power to hold, each tone
O' the low-keyed, vibrant voice, each syllable
O' the eloquent discourse, enriched with tales
Of venturous travel, brilliant with fine points
Of delicate humor, or illustrated
With living portraits of world-famoused men,
Jews, Saracens, Crusaders, Islamites,
Whose hand he had grasped--the iron warrior,
Godfrey of Bouillon, the wise infidel
Who in all strength, wit, courtesy excelled
The kings his foes--imperial Saladin.
But even as Raschi spake an abrupt noise
Of angry shouts, of battering staves that shook
The oaken portal, stopped the enchanted voice,
The uplifted wine spilled from the nerveless hand
Of Rabbi Jochanan. "God pity us!
Our enemies are upon us once again.
Hie thee, Rebekah, to the inmost chamber,
Far from their wanton eyes' polluting gaze,
Their desecrating touch! Kiss me! Begone!
Raschi, my guest, my son"--But no word more
Uttered the reverend man. With one huge crash
The strong doors split asunder, pouring in
A stream of soldiers, ruffians, armed with pikes,
Lances, and clubs--the unchained beast, the mob.
"Behold the town's new guest!" jeered one who tossed
The half-filled golden wine-cup's contents straight
In the noble pure young face. "What, master Jew!
Must your good friends of Prague break bolts and bars
To gain a peep at this prodigious pearl
You bury in your shell? Forth to the day!
Our Duke himself claims share of your new wealth;
Summons to court the Jew philosopher!"
Then, while some stuffed their pokes with baubles snatched
From board and shelf, or with malignant sword
Slashed the rich Orient rugs, the pictured woof
That clothed the wall; others had seized and bound,
And gagged from speech, the helpless, aged man;
Still others outraged, with coarse, violent hands,
The marble-pale, rigid as stone, strange youth,
Whose eye like struck flint flashed, whose nether lip
Was threaded with a scarlet line of blood,
Where the compressed teeth fixed it to forced calm.
He struggled not while his free limbs were tied,
His beard plucked, torn and spat upon his robe--
Seemed scarce to know these insults were for him;
But never swerved his gaze from Jochanan.
Then, in God's language, sealed from these dumb brutes,
Swiftly and low he spake: "Be of good cheer,
Reverend old man. I deign not treat with these.
If one dare offer bodily hurt to thee,
By the ineffable Name! I snap my chains
Like gossamer, and in his blood, to the hilt,
Bathe the prompt knife hid in my girdle's folds.
The Duke shall hear me. Patience. Trust in me."
Somewhat the authoritative voice abashed,
Even hoarse and changed, the miscreants, who feared
Some strong curse lurked in this mysterious tongue,
Armed with this evil eye. But brief the spell.
With gibe and scoff they dragged their victims forth,
The abused old man, the proud, insulted youth,
O'er the late path of his triumphal march,
Befouled with mud, with raiment torn, wild hair
And ragged beard, to Vladislaw. He sat
Expectant in his cabinet. On one side
His secular adviser, Narzerad,
Quick-eyed, sharp-nosed, red-whiskered as a fox;
On the other hand his spiritual guide,
Bishop of Olmutz, unctuous, large, and bland.
"So these twain are chief culprits!" sneered the Duke,
Measuring with the noble's ignorant scorn
His masters of a lesser caste. "Stand forth!
Rash, stubborn, vain old man, whose impudence
Hath choked the public highways with thy brood
Of nasty vermin, by our sufferance hid
In lanes obscure, who hailed this charlatan
With sky-flung caps, bent knees, and echoing shouts,
Due to ourselves alone in Prague; yea, worse,
Who offered worship even ourselves disclaim,
Our Lord Christ's meed, to this blaspheming Jew--
Thy crimes have murdered patience. Thou hast wrecked
Thy people's fortune with thy own. But first
(For even in anger we are just) recount
With how great compensation from thy store
Of hoarded gold and jewels thou wilt buy
Remission of the penalty. Be wise.
Hark how my subjects, storming through the streets,
Vent on thy tribe accursed their well-based wrath."
And, truly, through closed casements roared the noise
Of mighty surging crowds, derisive cries,
And victims' screams of anguish and affright.
Then Raschi, royal in his rags, began:
"Hear me, my liege!" At that commanding voice,
The Bishop, who with dazed eyes had perused
The grieved, wise, beautiful, pale face, sprang up,
Quick recognition in his glance, warm joy
Aflame on his broad cheeks. "No more! No more!
Thou art the man! Give me the hand to kiss
That raised me from the shadow of the grave
In Jaffa's lazar-house! Listen, my liege!
During my pilgrimage to Palestine
I, sickened with the plague and nigh to death,
Languished 'midst strangers, all my crumbling flesh
One rotten mass of sores, a thing for dogs
To shy from, shunned by Christian as by Turk,
When lo! this clean-breathed, pure-souled, blessed youth,
Whom I, not knowing for an infidel,
Seeing featured like the Christ, believed a saint,
Sat by my pillow, charmed the sting from pain,
Quenched the fierce fever's heat, defeated Death;
And when I was made whole, had disappeared,
No man knew whither, leaving no more trace
Than a re-risen angel. This is he!"
Then Raschi, who had stood erect, nor quailed
From glances of hot hate or crazy wrath,
Now sank his eagle gaze, stooped his high head,
Veiling his glowing brow, returned the kiss
Of brother-love upon the Christian's hand,
And dropping on his knees implored the three,
"Grace for my tribe! They are what ye have made.
If any be among them fawning, false,
Insatiable, revengeful, ignorant, mean--
And there are many such--ask your own hearts
What virtues ye would yield for planted hate,
Ribald contempt, forced, menial servitude,
Slow centuries of vengeance for a crime
Ye never did commit? Mercy for these!
Who bear on back and breast the scathing brand
Of scarlet degradation, who are clothed
In ignominious livery, whose bowed necks
Are broken with the yoke. Change these to men!
That were a noble witchcraft simply wrought,
God's alchemy transforming clods to gold.
If there be one among them strong and wise,
Whose lips anoint breathe poetry and love,
Whose brain and heart served ever Christian need--
And there are many such--for his dear sake,
Lest ye chance murder one of God's high priests,
Spare his thrice-wretched tribe! Believe me, sirs,
Who have seen various lands, searched various hearts,
I have yet to touch that undiscovered shore,
Have yet to fathom that impossible soul,
Where a true benefit's forgot; where one
Slight deed of common kindness sown yields not
As now, as here, abundant crop of love.
Every good act of man, our Talmud says,
Creates an angel, hovering by his side.
Oh! what a shining host, great Duke, shall guard
Thy consecrated throne, for all the lives
Thy mercy spares, for all the tears thy ruth
Stops at the source. Behold this poor old man,
Last of a line of princes, stricken in years,
As thy dead father would have been to-day.
Was that white beard a rag for obscene hands
To tear? a weed for lumpish clowns to pluck?
Was that benignant, venerable face
Fit target for their foul throats' voided rheum?
That wrinkled flesh made to be pulled and pricked,
Wounded by flinty pebbles and keen steel?
Behold the prostrate, patriarchal form,
Bruised, silent, chained. Duke, such is Israel!"
"Unbind these men!" commanded Vladislaw.
"Go forth and still the tumult of my town.
Let no Jew suffer violence. Raschi, rise!
Thou who hast served the Christ--with this priest's life,
Who is my spirit's counselor--Christ serves thee.
Return among thy people with my seal,
The talisman of safety. Let them know
The Duke's their friend. Go, publish the glad news!"
Raschi the Saviour, Raschi the Messiah,
Back to the Jewry carried peace and love.
But Narzerad fed his venomed heart with gall,
Vowing to give his fatal hatred vent,
Despite a world of weak fantastic Dukes
And heretic bishops. He fulfilled his vow.
THE DEATH OF RASCHI.
[Aaron Ben Mier "loquitur."]
If I remember Raschi? An I live,
Grandson, to bless thy grandchild, I'll forget
Never that youth and what he did for Prague.
Aye, aye, I know! he slurred a certain verse
In such and such a prayer; omitted quite
To stand erect there where the ritual
Commands us rise and bow towards the East;
Therefore, the ingrates brand him heterodox,
Neglect his memory whose virtue saved
Each knave of us alive. Not I forget,
No more does God, who wrought a miracle
For his dear sake. The Passover was here.
Raschi, just wedded with the fair Rebekah,
Bode but the lapsing of the holy week
For homeward journey with his bride to France.
The sacred meal was spread. All sat at board
Within the house of Rabbi Jochanan:
The kind old priest; his noble, new-found son,
Whose name was wrung in every key of praise,
By every voice in Prague, from Duke to serf
(Save the vindictive bigot, Narzerad);
The beautiful young wife, whose cup of joy
Sparkled at brim; next her the vacant chair
Awaited the Messiah, who, unannounced,
In God's good time shall take his place with us.
Now when the Rabbi reached the verse where one
Shall rise from table, flinging wide the door,
To give the Prophet entrance, if so be
The glorious hour have sounded, Raschi rose,
Pale, grave, yet glad with great expectancy,
Crossed the hushed room, and, with a joyous smile
To greet the Saviour, opened the door.
A curse!
A cry, "Revenged!" a thrust, a stifled moan,
The sheathing of a poniard--that was all!
In the dark vestibule a fleeing form,
Masked, gowned in black; and in the room of prayer,
Raschi, face downward on the stone-cold floor,
Bleeding his life out. Oh! what a cry was that
(Folk shuddered, hearing, roods off in the street)
Wherewith Rebekah rushed to raise her lord,
Kneeling beside him, striving in vain to quench
With turban, veil, torn shreds of gown, stained hands,
The black blood's sickening gush. He never spoke,
Never rewarded with one glance of life
The passion in her eyes. He met his end
Even as beneath the sickle the full ear
Bows to its death--so beautiful, silent, ripe.
Well, we poor Jews must gulp our injuries,
Howe'er they choke us. What redress in Prague
For the inhuman murder? A strange Jew
The victim; the suspected criminal
The ducal counselor! Such odds forbade
Revenge or justice. We forbore to seek.
The priest, discrowned o' the glory of his age,
The widow-bride, mourned as though smitten of God,
Gave forth they would with solemn obsequies
Bury their dead, and crave no help from man.
Now of what chanced betwixt the night of murder
And the appointed burial I can give
Only the sum of gossip--servants' tales,
Neighbors' reports, close confidences leaked
From friends and kindred. Night and day, folk said,
Rebekah wept, prayed, fasted by the corpse,
Three mortal days. Upon the third, her eyes,
Sunk in their pits, glimmered with wild, strange fire.
She started from her place beside the dead,
Kissed clay-cold brow, cheeks, lids, and lips once more,
And with a maniac's wan, heart-breaking smile,
Veiled, hooded, glided through the twilight streets,
A sable shadow. From the willow-grove,
Close by the Moldau's brink, beyond the bridge,
Her trace was lost. 'T was evening and mild May,
Air full of spring, skies perfect as a pearl;
Yet one who saw her pass amidst the shades
O' the blue-gray branches swears a sudden flame,
As of miraculous lightning, thrilled through heaven.
One hour thereafter she reentered Prague,
Slid swiftly through the streets, as though borne on
By ankle-wings or floating on soft cloud,
Smiling no more, but with illumined eyes,
Transfigured brow, grave lips, and faltering limbs,
So came into the room where Raschi lay
Stretched 'twixt tall tapers lit at head and foot.
She held in both hands leafy, flowerless plants,
Some she had fastened in her twisted hair,
Stuck others in her girdle, and from all
Issued a racy odor, pungent-sweet,
The living soul of Spring. Death's chamber seemed
As though clear sunshine and a singing bird
Therein had entered. From the precious herb
She poured into a golden bowl the sap,
Sparkling like wine; then with a soundless prayer,
White as the dead herself, she held the cup
To Raschi's mouth. A quick, small flame sprang up
From the enchanted balsam, died away,
And lo! the color dawned in cheek and lips,
The life returned, the sealed, blind lids were raised,
And in the glorious eyes love reawoke,
And, looking up, met love.
So runs the tale,
Mocked by the worldly-wise; but I believe,
Knowing the miracles the Lord hath wrought
In every age for Jacob's seed. Moreover,
I, with the highest and meanest Jew in Prague,
Was at the burial. No man saw the dead.
Sealed was the coffin ere the rites began,
And none could swear it went not empty down
Into the hollow earth. Too shrewd our priest
To publish such a wonder, and expose
That consecrated life to second death.
Scarce were the thirty days of mourning sped,
When we awoke to find his home left bare,
Rebekah and her father fled from Prague.
God grant they had glad meeting otherwhere!
AN EPISTLE.
From Joshua Ibn Vives of Allorqui to his Former Master, Solomon
Levi-Paul, de Santa-Maria, Bishop of Cartegna Chancellor of
Castile, and Privy Councillor to King Henry III. of Spain.
[In this poem I have done little more than elaborate
and versify the account given in Graetz's History of the
Jews (Vol. VIII., page 77), of an Epistle actually written
in the beginning of the 15th century by Joshua ben Joseph
Ibn Vives to Paulus de Santa Maria--E.L.]
I.
Master and Sage, greetings and health to thee,
From thy most meek disciple! Deign once more
Endure me at thy feet, enlighten me,
As when upon my boyish head of yore,
Midst the rapt circle gathered round thy knee
Thy sacred vials of learning thou didst pour.
By the large lustre of thy wisdom orbed
Be my black doubts illumined and absorbed.
II.
Oft I recall that golden time when thou,
Born for no second station, heldst with us
The Rabbi's chair, who art priest and bishop now;
And we, the youth of Israel, curious,
Hung on thy counsels, lifted reverent brow
Unto thy sanctity, would fain discuss
With thee our Talmud problems good and evil,
Till startled by the risen stars o'er Seville.
III.
For on the Synagogue's high-pillared porch
Thou didst hold session, till the sudden sun
Beyond day's purple limit dropped his torch.
Then we, as dreamers, woke, to find outrun
Time's rapid sands. The flame that may not scorch,
Our hearts caught from thine eyes, thou Shining One.
I scent not yet sweet lemon-groves in flower,
But I re-breathe the peace of that deep hour.
IV.
We kissed the sacred borders of thy gown,
Brow-aureoled with thy blessing, we went forth
Through the hushed byways of the twilight town.
Then in all life but one thing seemed of worth,
To seek, find, love the Truth. She set her crown
Upon thy head, our Master, at thy birth;
She bade thy lips drop honey, fired thine eyes
With the unclouded glow of sun-steeped skies.
V.
Forgive me, if I dwell on that which, viewed
From thy new vantage-ground, must seem a mist
Of error, by auroral youth endued
With alien lustre. Still in me subsist
Those reeking vapors; faith and gratitude
Still lead me to the hand my boy-lips kissed
For benison and guidance. Not in wrath,
Master, but in wise patience, point my path.
VI.
For I, thy servant, gather in one sheaf
The venomed shafts of slander, which thy word
Shall shrivel to small dust. If haply grief,
Or momentary pain, I deal, my Lord
Blame not thy servant's zeal, nor be thou deaf
Unto my soul's blind cry for light. Accord--
Pitying my love, if too superb to care
For hate-soiled name--an answer to my prayer.
VII.
To me, who, vine to stone, clung close to thee,
The very base of life appeared to quake
When first I knew thee fallen from us, to be
A tower of strength among our foes, to make
'Twixt Jew and Jew deep-cloven enmity.
I have wept gall and blood for thy dear sake.
But now with temperate soul I calmly search
Motive and cause that bound thee to the Church.
VIII.
Four motives possible therefor I reach--
Ambition, doubt, fear, or mayhap--conviction.
I hear in turn ascribed thee all and each
By ignorant folk who part not truth from fiction.
But I, whom even thyself didst stoop to teach,
May poise the scales, weigh this with that confliction,
Yea, sift the hid grain motive from the dense,
Dusty, eye-blinding chaff of consequence.
IX.
Ambition first! I find no fleck thereof
In all thy clean soul. What! could glory, gold,
Or sated senses lure thy lofty love?
No purple cloak to shield thee from the cold,
No jeweled sign to flicker thereabove,
And dazzle men to homage--joys untold
Of spiritual treasure, grace divine,
Alone (so saidst thou) coveting for thine!
X.
I saw thee mount with deprecating air,
Step after step, unto our Jewish throne
Of supreme dignity, the Rabbi's chair;
Shrinking from public honors thrust upon
Thy meek desert, regretting even there
The placid habit of thy life foregone;
Silence obscure, vast peace and austere days
Passed in wise contemplation, prayer, and praise.
XI.
One less than thou had ne'er known such regret.
How must thou suffer, who so lov'st the shade,
In Fame's full glare, whom one stride more shall set
Upon the Papal seat! I stand dismayed,
Familiar with thy fearful soul, and yet
Half glad, perceiving modest worth repaid
Even by the Christians! Could thy soul deflect?
No, no, thrice no! Ambition I reject!
XII.
Next doubt. Could doubt have swayed thee, then I ask,
How enters doubt within the soul of man?
Is it a door that opens, or a mask
That falls? and Truth's resplendent face we scan.
Nay, 't is a creeping, small, blind worm, whose task
Is gnawing at Faith's base; the whole vast plan
Rots, crumbles, eaten inch by inch within,
And on its ruins falsehood springs and sin.
XIII.
But thee no doubt confused, no problems vexed.
Thy father's faith for thee proved bright and sweet.
Thou foundst no rite superfluous, no text
Obscure; the path was straight before thy feet.
Till thy baptismal day, thou, unperplexed
By foreign dogma, didst our prayers repeat,
Honor the God of Israel, fast and feast,
Even as thy people's wont, from first to least.
XIV.
Yes, Doubt I likewise must discard. Not sleek,
Full-faced, erect of head, men walk, when doubt
Writhes at their entrails; pinched and lean of cheek,
With brow pain-branded, thou hadst strayed about
As midst live men a ghost condemned to seek
That soul he may nor live nor die without.
No doubts the font washed from thee, thou didst glide
From creed to creed, complete, sane-souled, clear-eyed.
XV.
Thy pardon, Master, if I dare sustain
The thesis thou couldst entertain a fear.
I would but rout thine enemies, who feign
Ignoble impulse prompted thy career.
I will but weigh the chances and make plain
To Envy's self the monstrous jest appear.
Though time, place, circumstance confirmed in seeming,
One word from thee should frustrate all their scheming.
XVI.
Was Israel glad in Seville on the day
Thou didst renounce him? Then mightst thou indeed
Snap finger at whate'er thy slanderers say.
Lothly must I admit, just then the seed
Of Jacob chanced upon a grievous way.
Still from the wounds of that red year we bleed.
The curse had fallen upon our heads--the sword
Was whetted for the chosen of the Lord.
XVII.
There where we flourished like a fruitful palm,
We were uprooted, spoiled, lopped limb from limb.
A bolt undreamed of out of heavens calm,
So cracked our doom. We were destroyed by him
Whose hand since childhood we had clasped. With balm
Our head had been anointed, at the brim
Our cup ran over--now our day was done,
Our blood flowed free as water in the sun.
XVIII.
Midst the four thousand of our tribe who held
Glad homes in Seville, never a one was spared,
Some slaughtered at their hearthstones, some expelled
To Moorish slavery. Cunningly ensnared,
Baited and trapped were we; their fierce monks yelled
And thundered from our Synagogues, while flared
The Cross above the Ark. Ah, happiest they
Who fell unconquered martyrs on that day!
XIX.
For some (I write it with flushed cheek, bowed head),
Given free choice 'twixt death and shame, chose shame,
Denied the God who visibly had led
Their fathers, pillared in a cloud of flame,
Bathed in baptismal waters, ate the bread
Which is their new Lord's body, took the name
Marranos the Accursed, whom equally
Jew, Moor, and Christian hate, despise, and flee.
XX.
Even one no less than an Abarbanel
Prized miserable length of days, above
Integrity of soul. Midst such who fell,
Far be it, however, from my duteous love,
Master, to reckon thee. Thine own lips tell
How fear nor torture thy firm will could move.
How thou midst panic nowise disconcerted,
By Thomas of Aquinas wast converted!
XXI.
Truly I know no more convincing way
To read so wise an author, than was thine.
When burning Synagogues changed night to day,
And red swords underscored each word and line.
That was a light to read by! Who'd gainsay
Authority so clearly stamped divine?
On this side, death and torture, flame and slaughter,
On that, a harmless wafer and clean water.
XXII.
Thou couldst not fear extinction for our race;
Though Christian sword and fire from town to town
Flash double bladed lightning to efface
Israel's image--though we bleed, burn, drown
Through Christendom--'t is but a scanty space.
Still are the Asian hills and plains our own,
Still are we lords in Syria, still are free,
Nor doomed to be abolished utterly.
XXIII.
One sole conclusion hence at last I find,
Thou whom ambition, doubt, nor fear could swerve,
Perforce hast been persuaded through the mind,
Proved, tested the new dogmas, found them serve
Thy spirit's needs, left flesh and sense behind,
Accepted without shrinking or reserve,
The trans-substantial bread and wine, the Christ
At whose shrine thine own kin were sacrificed.
XXIV.
Here then the moment comes when I crave light.
All's dark to me. Master, if I be blind,
Thou shalt unseal my lids and bless with sight,
Or groping in the shadows, I shall find
Whether within me or without, dwell night.
Oh cast upon my doubt-bewildered mind
One ray from thy clear heaven of sun-bright faith,
Grieving, not wroth, at what thy servant saith.
XXV.
Where are the signs fulfilled whereby all men
Should know the Christ? Where is the wide-winged peace
Shielding the lamb within the lion's den?
The freedom broadening with the wars that cease?
Do foes clasp hands in brotherhood again?
Where is the promised garden of increase,
When like a rose the wilderness should bloom?
Earth is a battlefield and Spain a tomb.
XXVI.
Our God of Sabaoth is an awful God
Of lightnings and of vengeance,--Christians say.
Earth trembled, nations perished at his nod;
His Law has yielded to a milder sway.
Theirs is the God of Love whose feet have trod
Our common earth--draw near to him and pray,
Meek-faced, dove-eyed, pure-browed, the Lord of life,
Know him and kneel, else at your throat the knife!
XXVII.
This is the God of Love, whose altars reek
With human blood, who teaches men to hate;
Torture past words, or sins we may not speak
Wrought by his priests behind the convent-grate.
Are his priests false? or are his doctrines weak
That none obeys him? State at war with state,
Church against church--yea, Pope at feud with Pope
In these tossed seas what anchorage for hope?
XXVIII.
Not only for the sheep without the fold
Is the knife whetted, who refuse to share
Blessings the shepherd wise doth not withhold
Even from the least among his flock--but there
Midmost the pale, dissensions manifold,
Lamb flaying lamb, fierce sheep that rend and tear.
Master, if thou to thy pride's goal should come,
Where wouldst thou throne--at Avignon or Rome?
XXIX.
I handle burning questions, good my lord,
Such as may kindle fagots, well I wis.
Your Gospel not denies our older Word,
But in a way completes and betters this.
The Law of Love shall supersede the sword,
So runs the promise, but the facts I miss.
Already needs this wretched generation,
A voice divine--a new, third revelation.
XXX.
Two Popes and their adherents fulminate
Ban against ban, and to the nether hell
Condemn each other, while the nations wait
Their Christ to thunder forth from Heaven, and tell
Who is his rightful Vicar, reinstate
His throne, the hideous discord to dispel.
Where shall I seek, master, while such things be,
Celestial truth, revealed certainty!
XXXI.
Not miracles I doubt, for how dare man,
Chief miracle of life's mystery, say HE KNOWS?
How may he closely secret causes scan,
Who learns not whence he comes nor where he goes?
Like one who walks in sleep a doubtful span
He gropes through all his days, till Death unclose
His cheated eyes and in one blinding gleam,
Wakes, to discern the substance from the dream.
XXXII.
I say not therefore I deny the birth,
The Virgin's motherhood, the resurrection,
Who know not how mine own soul came to earth,
Nor what shall follow death. Man's imperfection
May bound not even in thought the height and girth
Of God's omnipotence; neath his direction
We may approach his essence, but that He
Should dwarf Himself to us--it cannot be!
XXXIII.
The God who balances the clouds, who spread
The sky above us like a molten glass,
The God who shut the sea with doors, who laid
The corner-stone of earth, who caused the grass
Spring forth upon the wilderness, and made
The darkness scatter and the night to pass--
That He should clothe Himself with flesh, and move
Midst worms a worm--this, sun, moon, stars disprove.
XXXIV.
Help me, O thou who wast my boyhood's guide,
I bend my exile-weary feet to thee,
Teach me the indivisible to divide,
Show me how three are one and One is three!
How Christ to save all men was crucified,
Yet I and mine are damned eternally.
Instruct me, Sage, why Virtue starves alone,
While falsehood step by step ascends the throne.
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.
LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE.
I. THE EXODUS. (August 3, 1492.)
1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty
pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and
bleached highroads, through rock-split ravines and castellated,
cathedral-shadowed towns.
2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully
upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, well-nigh
swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her
sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised
and bleeding feet. "Mother, shall we soon be there?"
3. The youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to
father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own
heart is broken.
4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses
laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst
with fever.
5. The panting mules are urged forward with spur and goad; stuffed
are the heavy saddlebags with the wreckage of ruined homes.
6. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly-carried
silken scrolls.
7. In the fierce noon-glare a lad bears a kindled lamp; behind its
net-work of bronze the airs of heaven breathe not upon its faint
purple star.
8. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure,
plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army
of misfortune.
9. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! no friend shall
close his eyes.
10. They leave behind, the grape, the olive, and the fig; the vines
they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden-cities of Andalusia
and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castile; the
altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers.
11. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his
flock, the peasant his plow, to pelt with curses and stones; the
villager sets on their trail his yelping cur.
12. Oh the weary march, oh the uptorn roots of home, oh the
blankness of the receding goal!
13. Listen to their lamentation: They that ate dainty food are
desolate in the streets; they that were reared in scarlet embrace
dunghills. They flee away and wander about. Men say among the
nations, they shall no more sojourn there; our end is near, our
days are full, our doom is come.
14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and
the East refuseth to receive.
15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that
to-day, to-day, from the many-masted, gayly-bannered port of Palos,
sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of
sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom!
II. TREASURES.
1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black
prison.
2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl
slumbers in mud and ooze.
3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the
ingot of gold.
4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth;
long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast
thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.
5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the
golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine
jewel of the Law.
III. THE SOWER.
1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed.
2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred
and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with
furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes.
3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed.
4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a
sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree.
Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened
with its shadow.
5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of
health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a
serpent was coiled about its stem.
6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with
thorns, was nailed to a cross.
7. And the tree put forth treacherous boughs to strangle the Sower;
his flesh was bruised and torn, but cunningly he disentangled the
murderous knot and passed to the eastward.
8. Again there dropped from his hand the fecund seed.
9. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a
sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree.
Crescent shaped like little emerald moons were the leaves; it bare
blossoms of silver and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and
fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage and a serpent was
coiled about its stem.
10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished
a drawn sword.
11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to
strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous
knot and passes on.
12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm
is not spent.
13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous
Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam;
tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel!
IV. THE TEST.
1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel.
2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by
the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas.
3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent
rebuke and defiance.
4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit
above the sleeping eyelids of the senses.
5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and
fashioned it into a lyre.
6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial
meditation.
7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the
monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future.
8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I
beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask
of the son of the Ghetto.
V. CURRENTS.
1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable
tides, oversweep our continent.
2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of
Europe,
3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief, and Ekaterinoslav,
4. Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel
mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion.
5. And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the
dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward.
6. Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes
them.
7. The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem's royal
shepherd renew their youth amid the pastoral plains of Texas
and the golden valleys of the Sierras.
VI. THE PROPHET.
1. Moses Ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the path of the
perplexed;
2. Hallevi, the honey-tongued poet, wakening amid the silent ruins
of Zion the sleeping lyre of David;
3. Moses, the wise son of Mendel, who made the Ghetto illustrious;
4. Abarbanel, the counselor of kings; Alcharisi, the exquisite
singer; Ibn Ezra, the perfect old man; Gabirol, the tragic seer;
5. Heine, the enchanted magician, the heartbroken jester;
6. Yea, and the century-crowned patriarch whose bounty engirdles
the globe;--
7. These need no wreath and no trumpet; like perennial asphodel
blossoms, their fame, their glory resounds like the brazen-throated
cornet.
8. But thou--hast thou faith in the fortune of Israel? Wouldst thou
lighten the anguish of Jacob?
9. Then shalt thou take the hand of yonder caftaned wretch with
flowing curls and gold-pierced ears;
10. Who crawls blinking forth from the loathsome recesses of the
Jewry;
11. Nerveless his fingers, puny his frame; haunted by the bat-like
phantoms of superstition is his brain.
12. Thou shalt say to the bigot, "My Brother," and to the creature
of darkness, "My Friend."
13. And thy heart shall spend itself in fountains of love upon the
ignorant, the coarse, and the abject.
14. Then in the obscurity thou shalt hear a rush of wings, thine
eyes shall be bitten with pungent smoke.
15. And close against thy quivering lips shall be pressed the live
coal wherewith the Seraphim brand the Prophets.
VII. CHRYSALIS.
1. Long, long has the Orient-Jew spun around his helplessness the
cunningly enmeshed web of Talmud and Kabbala.
2. Imprisoned in dark corners of misery and oppression, closely he
drew about him the dust-gray filaments, soft as silk and stubborn
as steel, until he lay death-stiffened in mummied seclusion.
3. And the world has named him an ugly worm, shunning the blessed
daylight.
4. But when the emancipating springtide breathes wholesome,
quickening airs, when the Sun of Love shines out with cordial
fires, lo, the Soul of Israel bursts her cobweb sheath, and flies
forth attired in the winged beauty of immortality.
TO CARMEN SYLVA.
Oh, that the golden lyre divine
Whence David smote flame-tones were mine!
Oh, that the silent harp which hung
Untuned, unstrung,
Upon the willows by the river,
Would throb beneath my touch and quiver
With the old song-enchanted spell
Of Israel!
Oh, that the large prophetic Voice
Would make my reed-piped throat its choice!
All ears should prick, all hearts should spring,
To hear me sing
The burden of the isles, the word
Assyria knew, Damascus heard,
When, like the wind, while cedars shake,
Isaiah spake.
For I would frame a song to-day
Winged like a bird to cleave its way
O'er land and sea that spread between,
To where a Queen
Sits with a triple coronet.
Genius and Sorrow both have set
Their diadems above the gold--
A Queen three-fold!
To her the forest lent its lyre,
Hers are the sylvan dews, the fire
Of Orient suns, the mist-wreathed gleams
Of mountain streams.
She, the imperial Rhine's own child,
Takes to her heart the wood-nymph wild,
The gypsy Pelech, and the wide,
White Danube's tide.
She who beside an infant's bier
Long since resigned all hope to hear
The sacred name of "Mother" bless
Her childlessness,
Now from a people's sole acclaim
Receives the heart-vibrating name,
And "Mother, Mother, Mother!" fills
The echoing hills.
Yet who is he who pines apart,
Estranged from that maternal heart,
Ungraced, unfriended, and forlorn,
The butt of scorn?
An alien in his land of birth,
An outcast from his brethren's earth,
Albeit with theirs his blood mixed well
When Plevna fell?
When all Roumania's chains were riven,
When unto all his sons was given
The hero's glorious reward,
Reaped by the sword,--
Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains
Hung heaviest, within whose veins
The oldest blood of freedom streamed,
Still unredeemed?
O Mother, Poet, Queen in one!
Pity and save--he is thy son.
For poet David's sake, the king
Of all who sing;
For thine own people's sake who share
His law, his truth, his praise, his prayer;
For his sake who was sacrificed--
His brother--Christ!
THE DANCE TO DEATH;
A Historical Tragedy in Five Acts.
This play is dedicated, in profound veneration and respect, to the
memory of George Eliot, the illustrious writer, who did most among
the artists of our day towards elevating and ennobling the spirit
of Jewish nationality.
THE PERSONS.
FREDERICK THE GRAVE, Landgrave of Thuringia and Margrave of
Meissen, Protector and Patron of the Free City of Nordhausen.
PRINCE WILLIAM OF MEISSEN, his son.
SUSSKIND VON ORB, a Jew.
HENRY SCHNETZEN, Governor of Salza.
HENRY NORDMANN OF NORDMANNSTEIN, Knight of Treffurt.
REINHARD PEPPERCORN, Prior of Wartburg Monastery.
RABBI JACOB.
DIETRICH VON TETTENBORN, President of the Council.
REUBEN VON ORB, a boy, Susskind's son.
BARUCH and NAPHTALI,Jews.
RABBI CRESSELIN.
LAY-BROTHER.
PAGE.
PUBLIC SCRIVENER.
PRINCESS MATHILDIS, wife to Frederick.
LIEBHAID VON ORB.
CLAIRE CRESSELIN.
Jews, Jewesses, Burghers, Senators, Citizens, Citizen's Wife and
Boy, Flagellants, Servants, Guardsmen.
Scene--Partly in Nordhausen, partly in Eisenach. Time, May, 4th,
5th, 6th, 1349.
ACT I.--In Nordhausen.
SCENE I.
A street in the Judengasse, outside the Synagogue. During this
Scene Jews and Jewesses, singly and in groups, with prayer-books
in their hands, pass across the stage, and go into the Synagogue.
Among them, enter BARUCH and NAPHTALI.
NAPHTALI.
Hast seen him yet?
BARUCH.
Nay; Rabbi Jacob's door
Swung to behind him, just as I puffed up
O'erblown with haste. See how our years weigh, cousin.
Who'd judge me with this paunch a temperate man,
A man of modest means, a man withal
Scarce overpast his prime? Well, God be praised,
If age bring no worse burden! Who is this stranger?
Simon the Leech tells me he claims to bear
Some special message from the Lord--no doubt
To-morrow, fresh from rest, he'll publish it
Within the Synagogue.
NAPHTALI.
To-morrow, man?
He will not hear of rest--he comes anon--
Shall we within?
BARUCH.
Rather let's wait,
And scrutinize him as he mounts the street.
Since you denote him so remarkable,
You've whetted my desire.
NAPHTALI.
A blind, old man,
Mayhap is all you'll find him--spent with travel,
His raiment fouled with dust, his sandaled feet
Road-bruised by stone and bramble. But his face!--
Majestic with long fall of cloud-white beard,
And hoary wreath of hair--oh, it is one
Already kissed by angels.
BARUCH.
Look, there limps
Little Manasseh, bloated as his purse,
And wrinkled as a frost-pinched fruit. I hear
His last loan to the Syndic will result
In quadrupling his wealth. Good Lord! what luck
Blesses some folk, while good men stint and sweat
And scrape, to merely fill the household larder.
What said you of this pilgrim, Naphtali?
These inequalities of fortune rub
My sense of justice so against the grain,
I lose my very name. Whence does he come?
Is he alone?
NAPHTALI.
He comes from Chinon, France.
Rabbi Cresselin he calls himself--alone
Save for his daughter who has led him hither.
A beautiful, pale girl with round black eyes.
BARUCH.
Bring they fresh tidings of the pestilence?
NAPHTALI.
I know not--but I learn from other source
It has burst forth at Erfurt.
BARUCH.
God have mercy!
Have many of our tribe been stricken?
NAPHTALI.
No.
They cleanse their homes and keep their bodies sweet,
Nor cease from prayer--and so does Jacob's God
Protect His chosen, still. Yet even His favor
Our enemies would twist into a curse.
Beholding the destroying angel smite
The foal idolater and leave unscathed
The gates of Israel--the old cry they raise--
WE have begotten the Black Death--WE poison
The well-springs of the towns.
BARUCH.
God pity us!
But truly are we blessed in Nordhausen.
Such terrors seem remote as Egypt's plagues.
I warrant you our Landgrave dare not harry
Such creditors as we. See, here comes one,
The greatest and most liberal of them all--
Susskind von Orb.
SUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, and REUBEN enter, all pass across
the stage, and disappear within the Synagogue.
I'd barter my whole fortune,
And yours to boot, that's thrice the bulk of mine,
For half the bonds he holds in Frederick's name.
The richest merchant in Thuringia, he--
The poise of his head would tell it, knew we not.
How has his daughter leaped to womanhood!
I mind when she came toddling by his hand,
But yesterday--a flax-haired child--to-day
Her brow is level with his pompous chin.
NAPHTALI.
How fair she is! Her hair has kept its gold
Untarnished still. I trace not either parent
In her face, clean cut as a gem.
BARUCH.
Her mother
Was far-off kin to me, and I might pass,
I'm told, unguessed in Christian garb. I know
A pretty secret of that scornful face.
It lures high game to Nordhausen.
NAPHTALI.
Baruch,
I marvel at your prompt credulity.
The Prince of Meissen and Liebhaid von Orb!
A jest for gossips and--Look, look, he comes!
BARUCH.
Who's that, the Prince?
NAPHTALI.
Nay, dullard, the old man,
The Rabbi of Chinon. Ah! his stout staff,
And that brave creature's strong young hand suffice
Scarcely to keep erect his tottering frame.
Emaciate-lipped, with cavernous black eyes
Whose inward visions do eclipse the day,
Seems he not one re-risen from the grave
To yield the secret?
Enter RABBI JACOB, and RABBI CRESSELIN led by CLAIRE. They walk
across the stage, and disappear in the Synagogue.
BARUCH (exaltedly).
Blessed art thou, O Lord,
King of the Universe, who teachest wisdom
To those who fear thee!
NAPHTALI.
Haste we in. The star
Of Sabbath dawns.
BARUCH.
My flesh is still a-creep
From the strange gaze of those wide-rolling orbs.
Didst note, man, how they fixed me? His lean cheeks,
As wan as wax, were bloodless; how his arms
Stretched far beyond the flowing sleeve and showed
Gaunt, palsied wrists, and hands blue-tipped with death!
Well, I have seen a sage of Israel.
[They enter the Synagogue. Scene closes.]
SCENE II.
The Synagogue crowded with worshippers. Among the women in the
Gallery are discovered LIEBHAID VON ORB and CLAIRE CRESSELIN.
Below, among the men, SUSSKIND VON ORB and REUBEN. At the
Reader's Desk, RABBI JACOB. Fronting the audience under the
Ark of the Covenant, stands a high desk, behind which is seen
the white head of an old man bowed in prayer.
BARUCH and NAPHTALI
enter and take their seats.
BARUCH.
Think you he speaks before the service?
NAPHTALI.
Yea.
Lo, phantom-like the towering patriarch!
[RABBI CRESSELIN slowly rises beneath the Ark.]
RABBI CRESSELIN.
Woe unto Israel! woe unto all
Abiding 'mid strange peoples! Ye shall be
Cut off from that land where ye made your home.
I, Cresselin of Chinon, have traveled far,
Thence where my fathers dwelt, to warn my race,
For whom the fire and stake have been prepared.
Our brethren of Verdun, all over France,
Are burned alive beneath the Goyim's torch.
What terrors have I witnessed, ere my sight
Was mercifully quenched! In Gascony,
In Savoy, Piedmont, round the garden shores
Of tranquil Leman, down the beautiful Rhine,
At Lindau, Costnitz, Schaffhausen, St. Gallen,
Everywhere torture, smoking Synagogues,
Carnage, and burning flesh. The lights shine out
Of Jewish virtue, Jewish truth, to star
The sanguine field with an immortal blazon.
The venerable Mar-Isaac in Cologne,
Sat in his house at prayer, nor lifted lid
From off the sacred text, while all around
The fanatics ran riot; him they seized,
Haled through the streets, with prod of stick and spike
Fretted his wrinkled flesh, plucked his white beard.
Dragged him with gibes into their Church, and held
A Crucifix before him. "Know thy Lord!"
He spat thereon; he was pulled limb from limb.
I saw--God, that I might forget!--a man
Leap in the Loire, with his fair, stalwart son,
A-bloom with youth, and midst the stream unsheathe
A poniard, sheathing it in his boy's heart,
While he pronounced the blessing for the dead.
"Amen!" the lad responded as he sank,
And the white water darkened as with wine.
I saw--but no! You are glutted, and my tongue,
Blistered, refuseth to narrate more woe.
I have known much sorrow. When it pleased the Lord
To afflict us with the horde of Pastoureaux,
The rabble of armed herdsmen, peasants, slaves,
Men-beasts of burden--coarse as the earth they tilled,
Who like an inundation deluged France
To drown our race--my heart held firm, my faith
Shook not upon her rock until I saw,
Smit by God's beam, the big black cloud dissolve.
Then followed with their scythes, spades, clubs, and banners
Flaunting the Cross, the hosts of Armleder,
From whose fierce wounds we scarce are healed to-day.
Yet do I say the cup of bitterness
That Israel has drained is but a draught
Of cordial, to the cup that is prepared.
The Black Death and the Brothers of the Cross,
These are our foes--and these are everywhere.
I who am blind see ruin in their wake;
Ye who have eyes and limbs, arise and flee!
To-morrow the Flagellants will be here.
God's angel visited my sleep and spake:
"Thy Jewish kin in the Thuringian town
Of Nordhausen shall be swept off from earth,
Their elders and their babes--consumed with fire.
Go summon Israel to flight--take this
As sign that I, who call thee, am the Lord,
Thine eyes shalt be struck blind till thou hast spoken."
Then darkness fell upon my mortal sense,
But light broke o'er my soul, and all was clear,
And I have journeyed hither with my child
O'er mount and river, till I have announced
The message of the Everlasting God.
[Sensation in the Synagogue.]
RABBI JACOB.
Father, have mercy! when wilt thou have done
With rod and scourge? Beneath thy children's feet
Earth splits, fire springs. No rest, no rest! no rest,
A VOICE.
Look to the women! Marianne swoons!
ANOTHER VOICE.
Woe unto us who sinned!
ANOTHER VOICE.
We're all dead men.
Fly, fly ere dawn as our forefathers fled
From out the land of Egypt.
BARUCH.
Are ye mad?
Shall we desert snug homes? forego the sum
Scraped through laborious years to smooth life's slope,
And die like dogs unkenneled and untombed,
At bidding of a sorrow-crazed old man?
A VOICE.
He flouts the Lord's anointed! Cast him forth!
SUSSKIND VON ORB.
Peace, brethren, peace! If I have ever served
Israel with purse, arm, brain, or heart--now hear me!
May God instruct my speech! This wise old man,
Whose brow flames with the majesty of truth,
May be part-blinded through excess of light,
As one who eyes too long the naked sun,
Setting in rayless glory, turns and finds
Outlines confused, familiar colors changed,
All objects branded with one blood-bright spot.
Nor chafe at Baruch's homely sense; truth floats
Midway between the stars and the abyss.
We, by God's grace, have found a special nest
I' the dangerous rock, screened against wind and hawk;
Free burghers of a free town, blessed moreover
With the peculiar favor of the Prince,
Frederick the Grave, our patron and protector.
What shall we fear? Rather, where shall we seek
Secure asylum, if here be not one?
Fly? Our forefathers had the wilderness,
The sea their gateway, and the fire-cored cloud
Their divine guide. Us, hedged by ambushed foes,
No frank, free, kindly desert shall receive.
Death crouches on all sides, prepared to leap
Tiger-like on our throats, when first we step
From this safe covert. Everywhere the Plague!
As nigh as Erfurt it has crawled--the towns
Reek with miasma, the rank fields of spring,
Rain-saturated, are one beautiful--lie,
Smiling profuse life, and secreting death.
Strange how, unbidden, a trivial memory
Thrusts itself on my mind in this grave hour.
I saw a large white bull urged through the town
To slaughter by a stripling with a goad,
Whom but one sure stamp of that solid heel,
One toss of those mooned horns, one battering blow
Of that square marble forehead, would have crushed,
As we might crush a worm, yet on he trudged,
Patient, in powerful health to death. At once,
As though o' the sudden stung, he roared aloud,
Beat with fierce hoofs the air, shook desperately
His formidable head, and heifer-swift,
Raced through scared, screaming streets. Well, and the end?
He was the promptlier bound and killed and quartered.
The world belongs to man; dreams the poor brute
Some nook has been apportioned for brute life?
Where shall a man escape men's cruelty?
Where shall God's servant cower from his doom?
Let us bide, brethren--we are in His hand.
RABBI CRESSELIN (uttering a piercing shriek).
Ah!
Woe unto Israel! Lo, I see again,
As the Ineffable foretold. I see
A flood of fire that streams towards the town.
Look, the destroying Angel with the sword,
Wherefrom the drops of gall are raining down,
Broad-winged, comes flying towards you. Now he draws
His lightning-glittering blade! With the keen edge
He smiteth Israel--ah!
[He falls back dead. Confusion in the Synagogue.]
CLAIRE (from the gallery).
Father! My father!
Let me go down to him!
LIEBHAID.
Sweet girl, be patient.
This is the House of God, and He hath entered.
Bow we and pray.
[Meanwhile, some of the men surround and raise from the ground the
body of RABBI CRESSELIN. Several voices speaking at once.]
1ST VOICE.
He's doomed.
2D VOICE.
Dead! Dead!
3D VOICE.
A judgment!
4TH VOICE.
Make way there! Air! Carry him forth! He's warm!
3D VOICE.
Nay, his heart's stopped--his breath has ceased--quite dead.
5TH VOICE.
Didst mark a diamond lance flash from the roof,
And strike him 'twixt the eyes?
1ST VOICE.
Our days are numbered.
This is the token.
RABBI JACOB.
Lift the corpse and pray.
Shall we neglect God's due observances,
While He is manifest in miracle?
I saw a blaze seven times more bright than fire,
Crest, halo-wise, the patriarch's white head.
The dazzle stung my burning lids--they closed,
One instant--when they oped, the great blank cloud
Had settled on his countenance forever.*
Departed brother, mayest thou find the gates
Of heaven open, see the city of peace,
And meet the ministering angels, glad,
Hastening towards thee! May the High Priest stand
To greet and bless thee! Go thou to the end!
Repose in peace and rise again to life.
No more thy sun sets, neither wanes thy moon.
The Lord shall be thy everlasting light,
Thy days of mourning shall be at an end.
For you, my flock, fear nothing; it is writ
As one his mother comforteth, so I
Will comfort you and in Jerusalem
Ye shall be comforted. [Scene closes.]
*From this point to the end of the scene is a literal
translation of the Hebrew burial service.
SCENE III.
Evening. A crooked byway in the Judengasse. Enter PRINCE
WILLIAM.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Cursed be these twisted lanes! I have missed the clue
Of the close labyrinth. Nowhere in sight,
Just when I lack it, a stray gaberdine
To pick me up my thread. Yet when I haste
Through these blind streets, unwishful to be spied,
Some dozen hawk-eyes peering o'er crook'd beaks
Leer recognition, and obsequious caps
Do kiss the stones to greet my princeship. Bah!
Strange, 'midst such refuse sleeps so white a pearl.
At last, here shuffles one.
Enter a Jew.
Give you good even!
Sir, can you help me to the nighest way
Unto the merchant's house, Susskind von Orb?
JEW.
Whence come you knowing not the high brick wall,
Without, blank as my palm, o' the inner side,
Muring a palace? But--do you wish him well?
He is my friend--we must be wary, wary,
We all have warning--Oh, the terror of it!
I have not yet my wits!
PRINCE WILLIAM.
I am his friend.
Is he in peril? What's the matter, man?
JEW.
Peril? His peril is no worse than mine,
But the rich win compassion. God is just,
And every man of us is doomed. Alack!
HE said it--oh those wild, white eyes!
PRINCE WILLIAM.
I pray you,
Tell me the way to Susskind's home.
JEW.
Sweet master,
You look the perfect knight, what can you crave
Of us starved, wretched Jews? Leave us in peace.
The Judengasse gates will shut anon,
Nor ope till morn again for Jew or Gentile.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Here's gold. I am the Prince of Meissen--speak!
JEW.
Oh pardon! Let me kiss your mantle's edge.
This way, great sir, I lead you there myself,
If you deign follow one so poor, so humble.
You must show mercy in the name of God,
For verily are we afflicted. Come.
Hard by is Susskind's dwelling--as we walk
By your good leave I'll tell what I have seen.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE IV.
A luxuriously-furnished apartment in SUSSKIND VON ORB'S house.
Upon a richly-spread supper-table stands the seven-branched
silver candlestick of the Sabbath eve. At the table are seated
SUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, and REUBEN.
SUSSKIND.
Drink, children, drink! and lift your hearts to Him
Who gives us the vine's fruit.
[They drink.]
How clear it glows;
Like gold within the golden bowl, like fire
Along our veins, after the work-day week
Rekindling Sabbath-fervor, Sabbath-strength.
Verily God prepares for me a table
In presence of mine enemies! He anoints
My head with oil, my cup is overflowing.
Praise we His name! Hast thou, my daughter, served
The needs o' the poor, suddenly-orphaned child?
Naught must she lack beneath my roof.
LIEBHAID.
Yea, father.
She prays and weeps within: she had no heart
For Sabbath meal, but charged me with her thanks--
SUSSKIND.
Thou shalt be mother and sister in one to her.
Speak to her comfortably.
REUBEN.
She has begged
A grace of me I happily can grant.
After our evening-prayer, to lead her back
Unto the Synagogue, where sleeps her father,
A light at head and foot, o'erwatched by strangers;
She would hold vigil.
SUSSKIND.
'T is a pious wish,
Not to be crossed, befitting Israel's daughter.
Go, Reuben; heavily the moments hang,
While her heart yearns to break beside his corpse.
Receive my blessing.
[He places his hands upon his son's head in benediction. Exit
Reuben.]
Henceforth her home is here.
In the event to-night, God's finger points
Visibly out of heaven. A thick cloud
Befogs the future. But just here is light.
Enter a servant ushering in PRINCE WILLIAM.
SERVANT.
His highness Prince of Meissen.
[Exit.]
SUSSKIND.
Welcome, Prince!
God bless thy going forth and coming in!
Sit at our table and accept the cup
Of welcome which my daughter fills.
[LIEBHAID offers him wine.]
PRINCE WILLIAM (drinking).
To thee!
[All take their seats at the table.]
I heard disquieting news as I came hither.
The apparition in the Synagogue,
The miracle of the message and the death.
Susskind von Orb, what think'st thou of these things?
SUSSKIND.
I think, sir, we are in the hand of God,
I trust the Prince--your father and my friend.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Trust no man! flee! I have not come to-night
To little purpose. Your arch enemy,
The Governor of Salza, Henry Schnetzen,
Has won my father's ear. Since yester eve
He stops at Eisenach, begging of the Prince
The Jews' destruction.
SUSSKIND (calmly).
Schnetzen is my foe,
I know it, but I know a talisman,
Which at a word transmutes his hate to love.
Liebhaid, my child, look cheerly. What is this?
Harm dare not touch thee; the oppressor's curse,
Melts into blessing at thy sight.
LIEBHAID.
Not fear
Plucks at my heart-strings, father, though the air
Thickens with portents; 't is the thought of flight,
But no--I follow thee.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Thou shalt not miss
The value of a hair from thy home treasures.
All that thou lovest, Liebhaid, goes with thee.
Knowest thou, Susskind, Schnetzen's cause of hate?
SUSSKIND.
'T is rooted in an ancient error, born
During his feud with Landgrave Fritz the Bitten,
Your Highness' grandsire--ten years--twenty--back.
Misled to think I had betrayed his castle,
Who knew the secret tunnel to its courts,
He has nursed a baseless grudge, whereat I smile,
Sure to disarm him by the simple truth.
God grant me strength to utter it.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
You fancy
The rancor of a bad heart slow distilled
Through venomed years, so at a breath, dissolves.
O good old man, i' the world, not of the world!
Belike, himself forgets the doubtful core
Of this still-curdling, petrifying ooze.
Truth? why truth glances from the callous mass,
A spear against a rock. He hugs his hate,
His bed-fellow, his daily, life-long comrade;
Think you he has slept, ate, drank with it this while,
Now to forego revenge on such slight cause
As the revealed truth?
SUSSKIND.
You mistake my thought,
Great-hearted Prince, and justly--for I speak
In riddles, till God's time to make all clear.
When His day dawns, the blind shall see.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Forgive me,
If I, in wit and virtue your disciple,
Seem to instruct my master. Accident
Lifts me where I survey a broader field
Than wise men stationed lower. I spy peril,
Fierce flame invisible from the lesser peaks.
God's time is now. Delayed truth leaves a lie
Triumphant. If you harbor any secret,
Potent to force an ear that's locked to mercy,
In God's name, now disbosom it.
SUSSKIND.
Kind Heaven!
Would that my people's safety were assured
So is my child's! Where shall we turn? Where flee?
For all around us the Black Angel broods.
We step into the open jaws of death
If we go hence.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Better to fall beneath
The hand of God, than be cut off by man.
SUSSKIND.
We are trapped, the springe is set. Not ignorantly
I offered counsel in the Synagogue,
Quelled panic with authoritative calm,
But knowing, having weighed the opposing risks.
Our friends in Strasburg have been overmastered,
The imperial voice is drowned, the papal arm
Drops paralyzed--both, lifted for the truth;
We can but front with brave eyes, brow erect,
As is our wont, the fullness of our doom.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Then Meissen's sword champions your desperate cause.
I take my stand here where my heart is fixed.
I love your daughter--if her love consent,
I pray you, give me her to wife.
LIEBHAID.
Ah!
SUSSKIND.
Prince,
Let not this Saxon skin, this hair's gold fleece,
These Rhine-blue eyes mislead thee--she is alien.
To the heart's core a Jewess--prop of my house,
Soul of my soul--and I? a despised Jew.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Thy propped house crumbles; let my arm sustain
Its tottering base--thy light is on the wane,
Let me relume it. Give thy star to me,
Or ever pitch-black night engulf us all--
Lend me your voice, Liebhaid, entreat for me.
Shall this prayer be your first that he denies?
LIEBHAID.
Father, my heart's desire is one with his.
SUSSKIND.
Is this the will of God? Amen! My children,
Be patient with me, I am full of trouble.
For you, heroic Prince, could aught enhance
Your love's incomparable nobility,
'T were the foreboding horror of this hour,
Wherein you dare flash forth its lightning-sword.
You reckon not, in the hot, splendid moment
Of great resolve, the cold insidious breath
Wherewith the outer world shall blast and freeze--
But hark! I own a mystic amulet,
Which you delivering to your gracious father,
Shall calm his rage withal, and change his scorn
Of the Jew's daughter into pure affection.
I will go fetch it--though I drain my heart
Of its red blood, to yield this sacrifice.
[Exit SUSSKIND.]
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid?
Why should you tremble?
LIEBHAID.
Prince, I am afraid!
Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy,
A blasphemy against my father's grief,
My people's agony. I dare be happy--
So happy! in the instant's lull betwixt
The dazzle and the crash of doom.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
You read
The omen falsely; rather is your joy
The thrilling harbinger of general dawn.
Did you not tell me scarce a month agone,
When I chanced in on you at feast and prayer,
The holy time's bright legend? of the queen,
Strong, beautiful, resolute, who denied her race
To save her race, who cast upon the die
Of her divine and simple loveliness,
Her life, her soul,--and so redeemed her tribe.
You are my Esther--but I, no second tyrant,
Worship whom you adore, love whom you love!
LIEBHAID.
If I must die with morn, I thank my God,
And thee, my king, that I have lived this night.
Enter SUSSKIND, carrying a jewelled casket.
SUSSKIND.
Here is the chest, sealed with my signet-ring,
A mystery and a treasure lies within,
Whose worth is faintly symboled by these gems,
Starring the case. Deliver it unopened,
Unto the Landgrave. Now, sweet Prince, good night.
Else will the Judengasse gates be closed.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Thanks, father, thanks. Liebhaid, my bride, good-night.
[He kisses her brow.
SUSSKIND places his hands on the heads of
LIEBHAID and PRINCE WILLIAM.]
SUSSKIND.
Blessed, O Lord, art thou, who bringest joy
To bride and bridegroom. Let us thank the Lord.
[Curtain falls.]
ACT II.--At Eisenach.
SCENE I.
A Room in the LANDGRAVE'S Palace.
FREDERICK THE GRAVE and
HENRY SCHNETZEN.
LANDGRAVE.
Who tells thee of my son's love for the Jewess?
SCHNETZEN.
Who tells me? Ask the Judengasse walls,
The garrulous stones publish Prince William's visits
To his fair mistress.
LANDGRAVE.
Mistress? Ah, such sins
The Provost of St. George's will remit
For half a pound of coppers.
SCHNETZEN.
Think it not!
No light amour this, leaving shield unflecked;
He wooes the Jewish damsel as a knight
The lady of his heart.
LANDGRAVE.
Impossible!
SCHNETZEN.
Things more impossible have chanced. Remember
Count Gleichen, doubly wived, who pined in Egypt,
There wed the Pasha's daughter Malachsala,
Nor blushed to bring his heathen paramour
Home to his noble wife Angelica,
Countess of Orlamund. Yea, and the Pope
Sanctioned the filthy sin.
LANDGRAVE.
Himself shall say it.
Ho, Gunther! (Enter a Lackey.)
Bid the Prince of Meissen here.
[Exit Lackey. The LANDGRAVE paces the stage in agitation.]
Enter PRINCE WILLIAM.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Father, you called me?
LANDGRAVE.
Ay, when were you last
In Nordhausen?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
This morning I rode hence.
LANDGRAVE.
Were you at Susskind's house?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
I was, my liege.
LANDGRAVE.
I hear you entertain unseemly love
For the Jew's daughter.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Who has told thee this?
SCHNETZEN.
This I have told him.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Father, believe him not.
I swear by heaven 't is no unseemly love
Leads me to Susskind's house.
LANDGRAVE.
With what high title
Please you to qualify it?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
True, I love
Liebhaid von Orb, but 't is the honest passion
Wherewith a knight leads home his equal wife.
LANDGRAVE.
Great God! and thou wilt brag thy shame! Thou speakest
Of wife and Jewess in one breath! Wilt make
Thy princely name a stench in German nostrils?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Hold, father, hold! You know her--yes, a Jewess
In her domestic piety, her soul
Large, simple, splendid like a star, her heart
Suffused with Syrian sunshine--but no more--
The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia,
Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her!
If you will quench this passion, take my life!
[He falls at his father's feet.
FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage,
seizes his sword.]
SCHNETZEN.
He is your son!
LANDGRAVE.
Oh that he ne'er were born!
Hola! Halberdiers! Yeomen of the Guard!
Enter Guardsmen.
Bear off this prisoner! Let him sigh out
His blasphemous folly in the castle tower,
Until his hair be snow, his fingers claws.
[They seize and bear away PRINCE WILLIAM.]
Well, what's your counsel?
SCHNETZEN.
Briefly this, my lord.
The Jews of Nordhausen have brewed the Prince
A love-elixir--let them perish all!
[Tumult without. Singing of Hymns and Ringing of Church-bells.
The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN go to the window.]
SONG* (without).
The cruel pestilence arrives,
Cuts off a myriad human lives.
See the Flagellants' naked skin!
They scourge themselves for grievous sin.
Trembles the earth beneath God's breath,
The Jews shall all be burned to death.
*A rhyme of the times. See Graetz's "History of the Jews,"
page 374, vol. vii.
LANDGRAVE.
Look, foreign pilgrims! What an endless file!
Naked waist-upward. Blood is trickling down
Their lacerated flesh. What do they carry?
SCHNETZEN.
Their scourges--iron-pointed, leathern thongs,
Mark how they lash themselves--the strict Flagellants.
The Brothers of the Cross--hark to their cries!
VOICE FROM BELOW.
Atone, ye mighty! God is wroth! Expel
The enemies of heaven--raze their homes!
[Confused cries from below, which gradually die away in the
distance.]
Woe to God's enemies! Death to the Jews!
They poison all our wells--they bring the plague.
Kill them who killed our Lord! Their homes shall be
A wilderness--drown them in their own blood!
[The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN withdraw from the window.]
SCHNETZEN.
Do not the people ask the same as I?
Is not the people's voice the voice of God?
LANDGRAVE.
I will consider.
SCHNETZEN.
Not too long, my liege.
The moment favors. Later 't were hard to show
Due cause to his Imperial Majesty,
For slaughtering the vassals of the Crown.
Two mighty friends are theirs. His holiness
Clement the Sixth and Kaiser Karl.
LANDGRAVE.
'T were rash
Contending with such odds.
SCHNETZEN.
Courage, my lord.
These battle singly against death and fate.
Your allies are the sense and heart o' the world.
Priests warring for their Christ, nobles for gold,
And peoples for the very breath of life
Spoiled by the poison-mixers. Kaiser Karl
Lifts his lone voice unheard, athwart the roar
Of such a flood; the papal bull is whirled
An unconsidered rag amidst the eddies.
LANDGRAVE.
What credence lend you to the general rumor
Of the river poison?
SCHNETZEN.
Such as mine eyes avouch.
I have seen, yea touched the leathern wallet found
On the body of one from whom the truth was wrenched
By salutary torture. He confessed,
Though but a famulus of the master-wizard,
The horrible old Moses of Mayence,
He had flung such pouches in the Rhine, the Elbe,
The Oder, Danube--in a hundred brooks,
Until the wholesome air reeked pestilence;
'T was an ell long, filled with a dry, fine dust
Of rusty black and red, deftly compounded
Of powdered flesh of basilisks, spiders, frogs,
And lizards, baked with sacramental dough
In Christian blood.
LANDGRAVE.
Such goblin-tales may curdle
The veins of priest-rid women, fools, and children.
They are not for the ears of sober men.
SCHNETZEN.
Pardon me, Sire. I am a simple soldier.
My God, my conscience, and my suzerain,
These are my guides--blindfold I follow them.
If your keen royal wit pierce the gross web
Of common superstition--be not wroth
At your poor vassal's loyal ignorance.
Remember, too, Susskind retains your bonds.
The old fox will not press you; he would bleed
Against the native instinct of the Jew,
Rather his last gold doit and so possess
Your ease of mind, nag, chafe, and toy with it;
Abide his natural death, and other Jews
Less devilish-cunning, franklier Hebrew-viced,
Will claim redemption of your pledge.
LANDGRAVE.
How know you
That Susskind holds my bonds?
SCHNETZEN.
You think the Jews
Keep such things secret? Not a Jew but knows
Your debt exact--the sum and date of interest,
And that you visit Susskind, not for love,
But for his shekels.
LANDGRAVE.
Well, the Jews shall die.
This is the will of God. Whom shall I send
To bear my message to the council?
SCHNETZEN.
I
Am ever at your 'hest. To-morrow morn
Sees me in Nordhausen.
LANDGRAVE.
Come two hours hence.
I will deliver you the letter signed.
Make ready for your ride.
SCHNETZEN (kisses FREDERICK'S hand).
Farewell, my master.
(Aside.)
Ah, vengeance cometh late, Susskind von Orb,
But yet it comes! My wife was burned through thee,
Thou and thy children are consumed by me!
[Exit.]
SCENE II.
A Room in the Wartburg Monastery.
PRINCESS MATHILDIS and
PRIOR PEPPERCORN.
PRIOR.
Be comforted, my daughter. Your lord's wisdom
Goes hand in hand with his known piety
Thus dealing with your son. To love a Jewess
Is flat contempt of Heaven--to ask in marriage,
Sheer spiritual suicide. Let be;
Justice must take its course.
PRINCESS.
Justice is murdered;
Oh slander not her corpse. For my son's fault,
A thousand innocents are doomed. Is that
God's justice?
PRIOR.
Yea, our liege is but his servant.
Did not He purge with fiery hail those twain
Blotches of festering sin, Gomorrah, Sodom?
The Jews are never innocent,--when Christ
Agonized on the Cross, they cried--"His blood
Be on our children's heads and ours!" I mark
A dangerous growing evil of these days,
Pity, misnamed--say, criminal indulgence
Of reprobates brow-branded by the Lord.
Shall we excel the Christ in charity?
Because his law is love, we tutor him
In mercy and reward his murderers?
Justice is blind and virtue is austere.
If the true passion brimmed our yearning hearts
The vision of the agony would loom
Fixed vividly between the day and us:--
Nailed on the gaunt black Cross the divine form,
Wax-white and dripping blood from ankles, wrists,
The sacred ichor that redeems the world,
And crowded in strange shadow of eclipse,
Reviling Jews, wagging their heads accursed,
Sputtering blasphemy--who then would shrink
From holy vengeance? who would offer less
Heroic wrath and filial zeal to God
Than to a murdered father?
PRINCESS.
But my son
Will die with her he loves.
PRIOR.
Better to perish
In time than in eternity. No question
Pends here of individual life; our sight
Must broaden to embrace the scope sublime
Of this trans-earthly theme. The Jew survives
Sword, plague, fire, cataclysm--and must, since Christ
Cursed him to live till doomsday, still to be
A scarecrow to the nations. None the less
Are we beholden in Christ's name at whiles,
When maggot-wise Jews breed, infest, infect
Communities of Christians, to wash clean
The Church's vesture, shaking off the filth
That gathers round her skirts. A perilous germ!
Know you not, all the wells, the very air
The Jews have poisoned?--Through their arts alone
The Black Death scourges Christendom.
PRINCESS.
I know
All heinousness imputed by their foes.
Father, mistake me not: I urge no plea
To shield this hell-spawn, loathed by all who love
The lamb and kiss the Cross. I had not guessed
Such obscure creatures crawled upon my path,
Had not my son--I know not how misled--
Deigned to ennoble with his great regard,
A sparkle midst the dust motes.
SHE is sacred.
What is her tribe to me? Her kith and kin
May rot or roast--the Jews of Nordhausen
May hang, drown, perish like the Jews of France,
But she shall live--Liebhaid von Orb, the Jewess,
The Prince, my son, elects to love.
PRIOR.
Amen!
Washed in baptismal waters she shall be
Led like the clean-fleeced yeanling to the fold.
Trust me, my daughter--for through me the Church
Which is the truth, which is the life, doth speak.
Yet first 't were best essay to cure the Prince
Of this moon-fostered madness, bred, no doubt,
By baneful potions which these cunning knaves
Are skilled to mix.
PRINCESS.
Go visit him, dear father,
Where in the high tower mewed, a wing-clipped eagle,
His spirit breaks in cage. You are his master,
He is wont from childhood to hear wisdom fall
From your instructed lips. Tell him his mother
Rises not from her knees, till he is freed.
PRIOR.
Madam, I go. Our holy Church has healed
Far deadlier heart-wounds than a love-sick boy's.
Be of good cheer, the Prince shall live to bless
The father's rigor who kept pure of blot
A 'scutcheon more unsullied than the sun.
PRINCESS.
Thanks and farewell.
PRIOR.
Farewell. God send thee peace!
[Exeunt.]
SCENE III.
A mean apartment in one of the Towers of the Landgrave's Palace.
PRINCE WILLIAM discovered seated at the window.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
The slow sun sets; with lingering, large embrace
He folds the enchanted hill; then like a god
Strides into heaven behind the purple peak.
Oh beautiful! In the clear, rayless air,
I see the chequered vale mapped far below,
The sky-paved streams, the velvet pasture-slopes,
The grim, gray cloister whose deep vesper bell
Blends at this height with tinkling, homebound herds!
I see--but oh, how far!--the blessed town
Where Liebhaid dwells. Oh that I were yon star
That pricks the West's unbroken foil of gold,
Bright as an eye, only to gaze on her!
How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg!
When brown night falls and mists begin to live,
Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge,
Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds,
Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs,
And at their head the foam-begotten witch,
Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven!
Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight!
How all unlike the base desire which leads
Misguided men to that infernal cave,
Is the pure passion that exalts my soul
Like a religion! Yet Christ pardon me
If this be sin to thee!
[He takes his lute, and begins to sing. Enter with a lamp Steward
of the Castle, followed by PRIOR PEPPERCORN. Steward lays down the
lamp and exit.]
Good even, father!
PRIOR.
Benedicite!
Our bird makes merry his dull bars with song,
Yet would not penitential psalms accord
More fitly with your sin than minstrels' lays?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
I know no blot upon my life's fair record.
PRIOR.
What is it to wanton with a Christ-cursed Jewess,
Defy thy father and pollute thy name,
And fling to the ordures thine immortal soul?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Forbear! thy cowl's a helmet, thy serge frock
Invulnerable as brass--yet I am human,
Thou, priest, art still a man.
PRIOR.
Pity him, Heaven!
To what a pass their draughts have brought the mildest,
Noblest of princes! Softly, my son; be ruled
By me, thy spiritual friend and father.
Thou hast been drugged with sense-deranging potions,
Thy blood set boiling and thy brain askew;
When these thick fumes subside, thou shalt awake
To bless the friend who gave thy madness bounds.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Madness! Yea, as the sane world goes, I am mad.
What else to help the helpless, to uplift
The low, to adore the good, the beautiful,
To live, battle, suffer, die for truth, for love!
But that is wide of the question. Let me hear
What you are charged to impart--my father's will.
PRIOR.
Heart-cleft by his dear offspring's shame, he prays
Your reason be restored, your wayward sense
Renew its due allegiance. For his son
He, the good parent, weeps--hot drops of gall,
Wrung from a spirit seldom eased by tears.
But for his honor pricked, the Landgrave takes
More just and general vengeance.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
In the name of God,
What has he done to HER?
PRIOR.
Naught, naught,--as yet.
Sweet Prince, be calm; you leap like flax to flame.
You nest within your heart a cockatrice,
Pluck it from out your bosom and breathe pure
Of the filthy egg. The Landgrave brooks no more
The abomination that infects his town.
The Jews of Nordhausen are doomed.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Alack!
Who and how many of that harmless tribe,
Those meek and pious men, have been elected
To glut with innocent blood the oppressor's wrath?
PRIOR.
Who should go free where equal guilt is shared?
Frederick is just--they perish all at once,
Generous moreover--for in their mode of death
He grants them choice.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
My father had not lost
The human semblance when I saw him last.
Nor can he be divorced in this short space
From his shrewd wit. How shall he make provision
For the vast widowed, orphaned host this deed
Burdens the state withal?
PRIOR.
Oh excellent!
This is the crown of folly, topping all!
Forgive me, Prince, when I gain breath to point
Your comic blunder, you will laugh with me.
Patience--I'll draw my chin as long as yours.
Well, 't was my fault--one should be accurate--
Jews, said I? when I meant Jews, Jewesses,
And Jewlings! all betwixt the age
Of twenty-four hours, and of five score years.
Of either sex, of every known degree,
All the contaminating vermin purged
With one clean, searching blast of wholesome fire.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
O Christ, disgraced, insulted! Horrible man,
Remembered be your laugh in lowest hell,
Dragging you to the nether pit! Forgive me;
You are my friend--take me from here--unbolt
Those iron doors--I'll crawl upon my knees
Unto my father--I have much to tell him.
For but the freedom of one hour, sweet Prior,
I'll brim the vessels of the Church with gold.
PRIOR.
Boy! your bribes touch not, nor your curses shake
The minister of Christ. Yet I will bear
Your message to the Landgrave.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Whet your tongue
Keen as the archangel's blade of truth--your voice
Be as God's thunder, and your heart one blaze--
Then can you speak my cause. With me, it needs
No plausive gift; the smitten head, stopped throat,
Blind eyes and silent suppliance of sorrow
Persuade beyond all eloquence. Great God!
Here while I rage and beat against my bars,
The infernal fagots may be stacked for her,
The hell-spark kindled. Go to him, dear Prior,
Speak to him gently, be not too much moved,
'Neath its rude case you had ever a soft heart,
And he is stirred by mildness more than passion.
Recall to him her round, clear, ardent eyes,
The shower of sunshine that's her hair, the sheen
Of the cream-white flesh--shall these things serve as fuel?
Tell him that when she heard once he was wounded,
And how he bled and anguished; at the tale
She wept for pity.
PRIOR.
If her love be true
She will adore her lover's God, embrace
The faith that marries you in life and death.
This promise with the Landgrave would prevail
More than all sobs and pleadings.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Save her, save her!
If any promise, vow, or oath can serve.
Oh trusting, tranquil Susskind, who estopped
Your ears forewarned, bandaged your visioned eyes,
To woo destruction! Stay! did he not speak
Of amulet or talisman? These horrors
Have crowded out my wits. Yea, the gold casket!
What fixed serenity beamed from his brow,
Laying the precious box within my hands!
[He brings from the shelf the casket, and hands it to the Prior.]
Deliver this unto the Prince my father,
Nor lose one vital moment. What it holds,
I guess not--but my light heart whispers me
The jewel safety's locked beneath its lid.
PRIOR.
First I must foil such devil's tricks as lurk
In its gem-crusted cabinet.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Away!
Deliverance posts on your return. I feel it.
For your much comfort thanks. Good-night.
PRIOR.
Good-night.
[Exit.]
ACT III.
A cell in the Wartburg Monastery. Enter PRIOR PEPPERCORN with
the casket.
PRIOR.
So! Glittering shell where doubtless shines concealed
An orient treasure fit to bribe a king,
Ransom a prince and buy him for a son.
I have baptized thee now before the altar,
Effaced the Jew's contaminating touch,
And I am free to claim the Church's tithe
From thy receptacle.
[He is about to unlock the casket, when enters Lay-Brother, and he
hastily conceals it.]
LAY-BROTHER.
Peace be thine, father!
PRIOR.
Amen! and thine. What's new?
LAY-BROTHER.
A strange Flagellant
Fresh come to Wartburg craves a word with thee.
PRIOR.
Bid him within.
[Exit Lay-Brother.
PRIOR places the casket in a Cabinet.]
Patience! No hour of the day
Brings freedom to the priest.
Reenter Lay-Brother ushering in NORDMANN, and exit.
Brother, all hail!
Blessed be thou who comest in God's name!
NORDMANN.
May the Lord grant thee thine own prayer fourfold!
PRIOR.
What is thine errand?
NORDMANN.
Look at me, my father.
Long since you called me friend.
[The PRIOR looks at him attentively, while an expression of wonder
and terror gradually overspreads his face.]
PRIOR.
Almighty God!
The grave gives up her dead. Thou canst not be--
NORDMANN.
Nordmann of Nordmannstein, the Knight of Treffurt.
PRIOR.
He was beheaded years agone.
NORDMANN.
His death
Had been decreed, but in his stead a squire
Clad in his garb and masked, paid bloody forfeit.
A loyal wretch on whom the Prince wreaked vengeance,
Rather than publish the true bird had flown.
PRIOR.
Does Frederick know thou art in Eisenach?
NORDMANN.
Who would divine the Knight of Nordmannstein
In the Flagellants' weeds? From land to land,
From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews!
Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!"
They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned;
Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard,
Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague,
Had the truth squeezed from them with screws and racks,
All with explicit date, place, circumstance,
And written as it fell from dying lips
By scriveners of the law. On their confession
The Jews of Savoy were destroyed. To-morrow noon
The holy flames shall dance in Nordhausen.
PRIOR.
Your zeal bespeaks you fair. In your deep eyes
A mystic fervor shines; yet your scarred flesh
And shrunken limbs denote exhausted nature,
Collapsing under discipline.
NORDMANN.
Speak not
Of the degrading body and its pangs.
I am all zeal, all energy, all spirit.
Jesus was wroth at me, at all the world,
For our indulgence of the flesh, our base
Compounding with his enemies the Jews.
But at Madonna Mary's intercession,
He charged an angel with this gracious word,
"Whoso will scourge himself for forty days,
And labor towards the clean extermination
Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved."
Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul!
I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain.
When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood
Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles
Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl
Anigh his feet who suffered on the Cross.
PRIOR.
O all transforming Time! Can this be he,
The iron warrior of a decade since,
The gallant youth of earlier years, whose pranks
And reckless buoyancy of temper flashed
Clear sunshine through my gloom?
NORDMANN.
I am unchanged
(Save that the spirit of grace has fallen on me).
Urged by one motive through these banished years,
Fed by one hope, awake to realize
One living dream--my long delayed revenge.
You saw the day when Henry Schnetzen's castle
Was razed with fire?
PRIOR.
I saw it.
NORDMANN.
Schnetzen's wife,
Three days a mother, perished.
PRIOR.
And his child?
NORDMANN.
His child was saved.
PRIOR.
By whom?
NORDMANN.
By the same Jew
Who had betrayed the Castle.
PRIOR.
Susskind von Orb?
NORDMANN.
Susskind von Orb! and Schnetzen's daughter lives
As the Jew's child within the Judengasse.
PRIOR (eagerly).
What proof hast thou of this?
NORDMANN.
Proof of these eyes!
I visited von Orb to ask a loan.
There saw I such a maiden as no Jew
Was ever blessed withal since Jesus died.
White as a dove, with hair like golden floss,
Eyes like an Alpine lake. The haughty line
Of brow imperial, high bridged nose, fine chin,
Seemed like the shadow cast upon the wall,
Where Lady Schnetzen stood.
PRIOR.
Why hast thou ne'er
Discovered her to Schnetzen?
NORDMANN.
He was my friend.
I shared with him thirst, hunger, sword, and fire.
But he became a courtier. When the Margrave
Sent me his second challenge to the field,
His messenger was Schnetzen! 'Mongst his knights,
The apple of his eye was Henry Schnetzen.
He was the hound that hunted me to death.
He stood by Frederick's side when I was led,
Bound, to the presence. I denounced him coward,
He smote me on the cheek. Christ! it stings yet.
He hissed--"My liege, let Henry Nordmann hang!
He is no knight, for he receives a blow,
Nor dare avenge it!" My gyved wrists moved not,
No nerve twitched in my face, although I felt
Flame leap there from my heart, then flying back,
Leave it cold-bathed with deathly ooze--my soul
In silence took her supreme vow of hate.
PRIOR.
Praise be to God that thou hast come to-day.
To-morrow were too late. Hast thou not heard
Frederick sends Schnetzen unto Nordhausen,
With fire and torture for the Jews?
NORDMANN.
So! Henry Schnetzen
Shall be the Jews' destroyer? Ah!
PRIOR.
One moment.
Mayhap this box which Susskind sends the Prince
Reveals more wonders.
[He brings forth the Casket from the Cabinet, opens it, and
discovers a golden cross and a parchment which he hastily
overlooks.]
Hark! your word's confirmed
Blessed be Christ, our Lord! (reads).
"I Susskind von Orb of Nordhausen, swear by the unutterable Name,
that on the day when the Castle of Salza was burned, I rescued the
infant daughter of Henry Schnetzen from the flames. I purposed
restoring her to her father, but when I returned to Nordhausen, I
found my own child lying on her bier, and my wife in fevered frenzy
calling for her babe. I sought the leech, who counselled me to
show the Christian child to the bereaved mother as her own. The
pious trick prevailed; the fever broke, the mother was restored.
But never would she part with the child, even when she had learned
to whom it belonged, and until she was gathered with the dead--may
peace be with her soul!--she fostered in our Jewish home the
offspring of the Gentile knight. Then again would I have yielded
the girl to her parent, but Schnetzen was my foe, and I feared the
haughty baron would disown the daughter who came from the hands of
the Jew. Now however the maiden's temporal happiness demands that
she be acknowledged by her rightful father. Let him see what I
have written. As a token, behold this golden cross, bound by the
Lady Schnetzen round the infant's neck. May the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob redeem and bless me as I have writ the truth."
PRIOR.
I thank the Saints that this has come betimes.
Thou shalt renounce thy hate. Vengeance is mine,
The Lord hath said.
NORDMANN.
O all-transforming Time!
Is this meek, saintly-hypocrite, the firm,
Ambitious, resolute Reinhard Peppercorn,
Terror of Jews and beacon of the Church?
Look, you, I have won the special grace of Christ,
He knows through what fierce anguish! Now he leans
Out of his heaven to whisper in mine ear,
And reach me my revenge. He makes my cause
His own--and I shall fail upon these heights,
Sink from the level of a hate sublime,
To puerile pity!
PRIOR.
Be advised. You hold
Your enemy's living heart within your hands.
This secret is far costlier than you dreamed,
For Frederick's son wooes Schnetzen's daughter. See,
A hundred delicate springs your wit may move,
Your puppets are the Landgrave and the Prince,
The Governor of Salza and the Jews.
You may recover station, wealth, and honor,
Selling your secret shrewdly; while rash greed
Of clumsy vengeance may but drag you down
In the wild whirl of universal ruin.
NORDMANN.
Christ teach me whom to trust! I would not spill
One drop from out this brimming glorious cup
For which my parched heart pants. I will consider.
PRIOR.
Pardon me now, if I break off our talk.
Let all rest as it stands until the dawn.
I have many orisons before the light.
NORDMANN.
Good-night, true friend. Devote a prayer to me.
(Aside.) I will outwit you, serpent, though you glide
Athwart the dark, noiseless and swift as fate.
[Exit].
SCENE II.
On the road to Nordhausen. Moonlit, rocky landscape. On the
right between high, white cliffs a narrow stream spanned by a
wooden bridge. Thick bushes and trees. Enter PRINCE WILLIAM
and PAGE.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Is this the place where we shall find fresh steeds?
Would I had not dismounted!
PAGE.
Nay, sir; beyond
The Werra bridge the horses wait for us.
These rotten planks would never bear their weight.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
When I am Landgrave these things shall be cared for.
This is an ugly spot for travellers
To loiter in. How swift the water runs,
Brawling above our voices. Human cries
Would never reach Liborius' convent yonder,
Perched on the sheer, chalk cliff. I think of peril,
From my excess of joy. My spirit chafes,
She that would breast broad-winged the air, must halt
On stumbling mortal limbs. Look, thither, boy,
How the black shadows of the tree-boles stripe
The moon-blanched bridge and meadow.
PAGE.
Sir, what's that?
Yon stir and glitter in the bush?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
The moon,
Pricking the dewdrops, plays fantastic tricks
With objects most familiar. Look again,
And where thou sawst the steel-blue flicker glint,
Thou findst a black, wet leaf.
PAGE.
No, no! O God!
Your sword, sir! Treason!
[Four armed masked men leap from out the bush, seize, bind, and
overmaster, after a brief but violent resistance, the Prince and
his servant.]
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Who are ye, villains? lying
In murderous ambush for the Prince of Meissen?
If you be knights, speak honorably your names,
And I will combat you in knightly wise.
If ye be robbers, name forthwith your ransom.
Let me but speed upon my journey now.
By Christ's blood! I beseech you, let me go!
Ho! treason! murder! help!
[He is dragged off struggling. Exeunt omnes.]
SCENE III.
Nordhausen. A room in SUSSKIND's house.
LIEBHAID and CLAIRE.
LIEBHAID.
Say on, poor girl, if but to speak these horrors
Revive not too intense a pang.
CLAIRE.
Not so.
For all my woes seem here to merge their flood
Into a sea of infinite repose.
Through France our journey led, as I have told,
From desolation unto desolation.
Naught stayed my father's course--sword, storm, flame, plague,
Exhaustion of the eighty year old frame,
O'ertaxed beyond endurance. Once, once only,
His divine force succumbed. 'T was at day's close,
And all the air was one discouragement
Of April snow-flakes. I was drenched, cold, sick,
With weariness and hunger light of head,
And on the open road, suddenly turned
The whole world like the spinning flakes of snow.
My numb hand slipped from his, and all was blank.
His beard, his breath upon my brow, his tears
Scalding my cheek hugged close against his breast,
And in my ear deep groans awoke me. "God!"
I heard him cry, "try me not past my strength.
No prophet I, a blind, old dying man!"
Gently I drew his face to mine, and kissed,
Whispering courage--then his spirit broke
Utterly; shattered were his wits, I feared.
But past is past; he is at peace, and I
Find shelter from the tempest. Tell me rather
Of your serene life.
LIEBHAID.
Happiness is mute.
What record speaks of placid, golden days,
Matched each with each as twins? Till yester eve
My life was simple as a song. At whiles
Dark tales have reached us of our people's wrongs,
Strange, far-off anguish, furrowing with fresh care
My father's brow, draping our home with gloom.
We were still blessed; the Landgrave is his friend--
The Prince--my Prince--dear Claire, ask me no more!
My adored enemy, my angel-fiend,
Splitting my heart against my heart! O God,
How shall I pray for strength to love him less
Than mine own soul?
CLAIRE.
What mean these contrary words?
These passionate tears?
LIEBHAID.
Brave girl, who art inured
To difficult privation and rude pain,
What good shall come forswearing kith and God,
To follow the allurements of the heart?
CLAIRE.
Duty wears one face, but a thousand masks.
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