A Legend

TO the home of the rabbi a Lord in his splendor,
Comes riding at dead of night;

His glittering helmet with feathers is garnished,
With stains his breast is bedight.

In a room where the flame of a lamplet is glowing,
So wan and so lonely and dim;

The Lord of the Manor in quest of his learning,
Attentively listens to him.

And yet ere the church bells at dawn o' the morning
Their summons to prayer intone,

The Lord of the Manor rides forth from the Ghetto; To no one his secret is known.

By daylight the sage in his cloistered seclusion

Sees never the Lord of the night;

But the dreams and the deeds of the noble disciple,
Are fruit of the tree of his might.

And so through the squalor and dirt of the Ghetto,
The Lord with his retinue rides,

And gazes with pensive and yearning attention,
At the home where his teacher abides.

JEHOASH.

(Translated by Elias Lieberman.)

The Rabbi's Song

IF thought ever reach to Heaven,

On Heaven let it dwell.

For fear that Thought be given.
Like Power to reach to Hell;

For fear that Desolation

And darkness on thy mind

Perplex the habitation

Which thou hast left behind.

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

GIFTS, as romantic as the cruse of oil,

Found in the days of mad Antiochus,

Were brewed by Hadrian from henbane; spruce For Israel's quaffing; potions, framed to foil A nation's growth, they met with swift recoil!

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.

An Invocation

OH, harp of Judah! wake again!

ISIDOR WISE.

Can no one deftly touch thy strings

To scatter far the sacred strain

Which from divinest patience springs!
Have all the strife-sown troublous years
No joys for happy song to cast?
Can love distil no hope from tears,
Or steal no beauty from the past?

Has music lost its spell and power

To summon hopes that only rest?
Endowed with truths, our lasting dower,
That mock the ages' wear and test;

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
To 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.

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