Yet still I linger here; I scarce know why.

There is a charm that, all beyond my will,

Allures me, holds me, will not let me go.

'T is not indeed like our Jerusalem; Yet in its age, its sorrows and its wrongs,

It is allied to her, a city sad, That, like a mourner weeping at a tomb,

Sits clad in sackcloth, grieving o'er the past,

Hoping for nothing, stricken by despair.

Sad, lonely stretches compass her about

With silence. Wandering here, at every step

We stumble o'er some ruin, once the home

Of happy life; or pensive, stay our feet To ponder o'er some stern decaying tomb,

The haunt of blinking owls. Nor all in vain

Doth kindly nature strive to heal the wounds

Of Time and human rage: with ivy green,

With whispering grasses, reeds, and bright-eyed flowers,

Veiling its ruin; and with tremulous songs

Of far larks hidden in the deep blue sky,

Lifting the thoughts to heaven.
Here many a day
Alone I stray, and hold communion
sad

With dreams that wander far on bound

less ways

Of meditation vague, recalling oft
The passages of Prophets in our Land.
At times Isaiah seems to speak, and
say

To Rome, as once unto Jerusalem:
"Judah is fallen, ruin hath involved
Jerusalem. What mean ye that ye beat
My people into pieces? that ye grind
The faces of the poor? The Lord shall
take

The bravery of thy ornaments away; Thy men shall perish by the sword in war;

No one of us is free of this, or old Or young, whatever be our state,Elder or priest or child,-it matters

not.

High ladies, cardinals in purple robes, Ay, even the Pope himself, with all his court,

Seated on high, in all their pomp and pride,

Laugh at us, as we stumble on our

course,

Pelted with filth, and shake their holy sides,

Encouraging the mob that mock at us.

But what offends me more than all the rest

Is that this usage has debased our tribe,

Bent its proud neck, and forced it to the earth,

Taught us to cringe and whimper, taught us wiles,

And driven us at their beck to creep and crawl.

We, who were God's own people,--we must bow

Before these Christians; with a smile accept

Even their kicks and humbly give them thanks

For our mere life. This stings me to the quick.

As for what Christ said, "Love your enemies;

Bless them that curse you, and do good to them,"

This is beyond the power of any manBeyond my power at least, I curse them all!

(When he saw, at length, the appointed

measure

Of misery meted out to him)
Bury his books, and all his treasure.
Books of wisdom many a one,-
All the teaching of all the ages,
All the learning under the sun,
Learned by all the Hebrew sages
To Eliphaz from Solomon;
Not to mention the mystic pages
Of Nathan the son of Shimeon
The Seer, which treat of the sacred

use

Of the number Seven (quoth the Jews,
"A secret sometime filched from us
By one called Apollonius"),
The science of the even and odd,
The signs of the letters Aleph and Jod,
And the seven magical names of God.

Furthermore, he laid in store
Many a vessel of beaten ore,
Pure, massy, rich with rare device

Of Florence-work wrought under and o'er,

Shekels of silver, and stones of price,
Sardius, sapphire, topaz, more
In number than may well be told,
Milan stuffs, and merchandise

Of Venice, the many times bought and sold.

He buried them deep where none might mark,

Hid them from sight of the hated race, Gave them in guard of the Powers of the Dark.

And solemnly set his curse on the place. Then he saddled his mule, and with him took

Zillah his wife, and Rachel his daughter,

And Manassah his son; and turned and shook

The dust from his foot on the place

Therefore he ended the days of his life
In evil times; and by the hand
Of Rachel his daughter, and Zillah his
wife,

Was laid to rest in another land.

But, before his face to the wall he turned,

As the eyes of the women about his bed

Grew hungry and hard with a hope unfed,

And the misty lamp more misty burned, To Zillah and Rachel the Rabbi said Where they might find, if fate turned kind,

And the fires in Cordova, grown slack, Should ever suffer their footsteps back, The tomb where by stealth he had buried his wealth

In the evil place, when in dearth and lack

He fled from the foe, and the stake, and the rack;

IV.

"A strand of colors, clear to be seen By the main black cord of it twined between

The scarlet, the golden and the green; All the length of the Moorish wall the line

Runs low with his mystic serpent-twine, Until he is broken against the angle Where thin grizzled grasses dangle, Like dead men's hairs, from the weeds that clot

The scurfy side of a splintered pot, Upon the crumbled cornice squat, Gaping, long-eared, in his hue and

shape

Like a Moor's head cut off at the nape. The line, till it touches the angle, follow,

Take pebbles then in the hand and drop Stone after stone till the ground sounds hollow.

Thence walk left, till there starts, to stop

Your steps, a thorn-tree with an arm Stretched out as though some mad alarm

Had seized upon it from behind.
It points the way until you find
A flat square stone, with letters cut.
Stoop down to lift it, 'twill not move,