["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,
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 unbathed space to where his fellows
dwell;
The martyr, granted respite from the rack,
The death-doomed victim, pardoned from his
Such only know the joy these exiles gain,-.
Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.
Strange faces theirs, where, though the Orient sun Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the
Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded
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.
THE RABBI AND THE CRIPPLE
Hark! through the quiet evening air their song
Floats forth with wild, sweet rhythm and glad
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 Rustles of palms and Eastern streams one hears, And the broad prairie melts in mists of tears.
THE RABBI AND THE CRIPPLE
A TALMUDIC TALE
Reb Simeon, the novice, just ordained,
And conscious of the knowledge he had gained,
Was journeying, well mounted on a mule,
From Migdal Ezer, centre of a School
Of sage Tannaim, at whose feet he'd heard
The Torah's subtle, soul-impelling word,-
When lo! the beast which bore him reared, and stood,
Quite sudden, still, and roused him from his mood. He raised the lash, impatient of delay,
But looked, and saw directly in his way
A little man, misshapen and ill-starred,
Whose puny weight all further progress barred.
Now, drawing rein, he frowned upon the sight, And uttered loud what every Israelite
Is bound to whisper, very soft and low,
On seeing things uncommon in their woe:
"Be thou exalted, King of all the Earth,
Who fashionest all beings from their birth
According to Thy high omniscient Will!"—
The blessing done, his voice rang out quite shrill
(Unmindful of the greeting he received,
Nor caring if his banter pleased or grieved):
"Whence hailest thou, ill-favored, ugly shape,
So strangely like the elemental ape;
Are sons of men, where thou abidest, thus
Unhandsome-and hast come to mock at us?
Begone! let no unseemly thing intrude
Upon my sight, in this uplifted mood."-
The cripple blanched, and faltered for a space,
Half scorn, half sorrow warring on his face.
All gnarled and twisted, like a stunted oak,
He stood yet firm, quite blasted, but not broke;
He strove to speak, but found no voice to say
A word of bane to blight him on his way.
Nor would he have invoked it to his ill,
For soon serene, and master of his will,
He flashed his eye full on the Rabbi's own
And slowly said, a tremor in his tone:
"Go, Rabbi, go, seek out the Master; He
Alone must bear the blame, who fashioned me
Thus feeble and ignoble, that you may
Insult His Image in my shapeless clay.
THE RABBI AND THE CRIPPLE 255
Reprove Him then; pray, fail not to upbraid
The Potter for the shattered wheel he made!"
Reb Simeon quailed, and, pallid to the lips,
A death-chill in his very finger tips,
Could offer no reply. His buoyant mood
No longer served his purpose to be rude,
The light had fled from out his fervent eye,
And in his strait he prayed that he might die.
A thousand visions flitted o'er his brain,
Within one second's overwhelming pain:
He saw himself in Migdal, where he'd spent
The teeming years in study reverent.
Once more he heard the drone of voices near,
In sing-song zeal responding to the seer,
Who, robed in white, with flowing beard of gray,
Rocked to and fro, in learned quandary;—
He visioned next the Master, who, engrossed
In colloquy with some ancestral ghost,
Glanced up at him, one day (as he, obscure,
And all alone, felt sure to be secure),
And, startled, called: "O Simeon, my son,
Dost tarry yet? The day well nigh is done!
Thou seemest pale, and overstrained, and frail,
-Soul without flesh is never of avail-
I bid thee, lad, depart and take some ease,
Thou art too spent for midnight reveries.”—
He then recalled with pulsating remorse
Each precious hour of spirit-intercourse
In those rare days, when God abode in prayer,
And Mercy claimed what time he had to spare.
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