The Poets of Old Israel LD Israel's readers of the stars, OLD I love them best. Musing, they read, High truths were never learned below. Faith falters, knowledge does not know, JOHN VANCE CHENEY. One of the earliest specimens of English verse written by an English-born Jew addressed to Daniel Israel Lopez Laguna, who published in 1720 a metrical translation of the Psalms in Spanish under the title "Espejo fiet de Vidas." On Translating the Psalms HOW great thy Thoughts, how Glorious thy De signs, How every Musick varies in thy Lines; The Praise of God in every Verse is found, Art strengthening Nature, Sense improv'd by Sound; Happy the Man who strings his tuneful Lyre, SAMPSON GUIDEON, JR. To God THOU, the One supreme o'er all! May we upon thy greatness call, Ineffable! to thee what speech How, unapproached, shall mind of man Unuttered thou! all uttered things And all things, as they move along Thy watchword heed, in silent song And lo! all things abide in thee, One being thou, all things, yet none, All-named from attributes thine own, How call thee as we ought? Thou art unlimited, alone, Beyond the range of thought. GREGORY NANZIANZEN. (Translated by Allen W. Chatfield). Thou Art of All Created Things O Lord, the essence and the cause, The Seeing Eye THERE is an eye that never sleeps There is an ear that never shuts When human strength gives way; REGINALD HEBER. O O Thou Eternal One! THOU Eternal One! whose presence bright All space doth occupy, all motion guide: Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight; Thou only God! There is no God beside! Being above all beings! mighty One! Whom none can comprehend and none explore; Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone: Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er,— Being whom we call God, and know no more! GABRIEL ROMANOVITCH DERZHAVIN. Translated by SIR JOHN BOWRING. The Infinity of God NO coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life-that in me has rest, As I-undying Life-have power in Thee! Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idle froth amid the boundless main. To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine infinity; So surely anchored on The steadfast rock of immortality. With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears. Though earth and man were gone, And suns and universes ceased to be, And Thou were left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee. There is not room for Death, Nor atom that his might could render void: Thou Thou art Being and Breath, And what Thou art may never be destroyed. EMILY BRONTË. Adoration I LOVE my God, but with no love of mine, I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, I am as nothing, and rejoice to be Emptied and lost and swallowed up in thee. |