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Our lives, our tears as water
Are poured upon the ground;
God giveth no man quarter,

Yet God a means hath found,
Tho' faith and hope have vanished
And even love grows dim,

A means whereby his banished
Be not expelled from Him.

RUDYARD KIPLING.

A Sonnet

To the Beloved Memory of Robert Browning
SERENE, translucent as yon Maytime star
In sanctuary of its bliss superb,
Accept, O Bard! a sprig of Israel's herb,
In bitterness no less familiar

To you, than is the knell of surging bar,

When night-winds raving, dreamer's peace perturb, With blood and fire, and hell-groans from the curb, Shrined in the tales you wrote in days afar, Brave sharer in our nether fates, you bore

Israel's death-crown, voiced his feeble rights, Stood weeping by his side, and mourning wore, In those black days, whose memory still frights, Still casts its spectral hue athwart the brain, And feeds the heart with hopeless endless pain. M. L. R. BRESLAR.

The Hebrew Mind

IFTS, as romantic as the cruse of oil,

GIF

I

701

Found in the days of mad Antiochus,

Were brewed by Hadrian from henbane: sp For Israel's quaffing; potions, framed

A nation's growth, they met w

Tempt never genius, with devil's juice!
Vain arts, O Hadrian, and vain the ruse,-
When balked by birds, who garnered all the spoil.
For Hadrian, as for Vespasian,

History sheds a tear of wonder blind;

Mere vessels those, Balaam's sent to bless,

They scourged with fire and sword, till the dread ban Flowered, like Aaron's rod of loveliness,

And forged that wondrous thing, the Hebrew mind. M. L. R. BReslar.

Who Gives in Love

NAUGHT is there in life worth living,

Save it flavored be by love;
Naught is there in life worth giving,
Save it sanctioned be above.
Who in evil mood bestoweth,
In his heart the canker groweth ;
He who gives in truth and love
Shall a thousand pleasures prove.

ISIDOR WISE.

An Invocation impen

OH, harp of Judah! wake again! only bet
Can no one deftly touch thy strings
To scatter far the sacred strainin
Which from divinest patience springs!
Have all the strife-sown troublous years
No joys for happy song to cast? od bak
Can love distil no hope from tears,
Or steal no beauty from the past?

[graphic]

Can no heart-stirring melody

Imbued with light and touched with fire, Flow from a nation proud and free Whose past must urge them to aspire?

Reproach, an ignominious sea,

Can follow in our wake no more; The poisoned waves of calumny

Are washed away from Freedom's shore. The justice of a nobler age

Has reached and raised our scattered race;

Our history shows a fairer page,

Our future wears a brighter face.

The rooted weeds of narrow thought
Which closely cling, or idly spread,
Which ignorance has sown and wrought,

Are crushed and buried with the dead. A loftier sense of heavenly things,

A wider view of human life
Have fashioned tolerance: which brings
Its own repose to cast off strife.

Beyond man's vain imaginings,

Is Israel's faith that never dies,

The boon of slaves-the pride of Kings-
Its meanings make the nations wise,
And thro' the mists of ages gone,
Its God-stamped visions still appear
As in the Bible's earliest dawn,
Supremely true, divinely clear!

And who asserts that Judah's claim
Το any chosen land is o'er?

When all the earth contains her fame

That spreads and widens evermore;

The truths that sanctify her creed

Shall scatter hopes where'er they shine,

Until all men shall feel the need

Of her own unity divine.

So wake, my harp, my fingers press
Thy rust-worn strings, while fancy longs
To dower with melodiousness,

The burden of unuttered songs;
My faltering touch may reach in vain.
The music of my sacred themes,
Still Truth may charm the feeble strain
And lend its sweetness to my dreams!

ISIDORE G. ASCHER.

O

Adas Israel

ISRAEL! in the morn's returning light,

Thy temple stands, all crowned with splendor bright,

And there, high Salem's courts again shall tell • Jehovah's praise, and faith of Israel.

The watchman on thy long benighted walls

Hath marked the night's departing gloom, and calls;
Up, Israel! now thy darkness flies away,
And light is breaking into glorious day.

The dawn of freedom on a darkened earth,
Thy faith awakens to a brighter birth.
Thy promised king-awaited long in vain,
Now comes at last, in light and truth, to reign.

Through long oppression, God hath guided thee,
From darker Egypt, through a bloodless sea;
And by the chastening of his hand, hath strove
To make thee still more faithful to his love.

And now, no more thy race oppressed shall be,
But all thy foes shall strive to honor thee,
And nations at thy temple-altars bring

Their richest offerings to thy sovereign King

O Israel! wandering in all lands afar,
Thy faith of old-be still thy guiding star,
And thy bright temple shall show forth again-
The shining glories of thine ancient reign.

M. BEYER.

Poetry

OD made the world with rhythm and rime—

GOD

The sun's refrain he made the moon;

He swung the stars to beat in time

And set the universe in tune.
He gave the seas their mighty tongue,
He gave his winds their lyric wings,
And thus the very soul of Song

Was woven in the scheme of things.

To-day this wonder was revealed
Upon a twilight colored plain;
I saw it in the town and field,

I heard it in the singing rain.
The bows and birds repeated it,

The streams intoned it as they ran, And then I saw how closely knit Were God and Poetry with man.

A rift of sky-a group of trees,
A ripple and a swallow's dart,
The cadence of a dying breeze,

Like sudden music, swept my heart;
A laughing child looked up and sprang
To greet me at the homeward climb-
And all about me surged and sang

The world God made with rhythm and rime.
LOUIS UNTERMEYER.

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