The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south-wind's breath,
While underneath such leafy tents they keep
The long, mysterious Exodus of Death.
And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown-down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.
The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange
With Abraham and Jacob of old times.
"Blessed be God! for he created death!"
The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace"; Then added, in the certainty of faith,
"And giveth Life that nevermore shall cease."
Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,
No Psalms of David now the silence break,
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain,
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,
Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate,
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?
They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.
All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,
The wasting famine of the heart they fed,
And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.
Anathema maranatha! was the cry
That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai
Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.
Pride and humiliation hand in hand
Walked with them through the world where'er they went;
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,
And yet unshaken as the continent.
For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus forever with reverted look
The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain.
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
TALK not of Christian France, lest mantling shame Glow in its fiery blush to burning flame,
And on the altar of the wide world's ire
Doom French injustice to eternal fire.
With public scorn we loath the vengeful lust
In which French soldiers have betrayed their trust,
And bide the time when in the coming years
Her infamy is purged with bloody tears.
All nations call for justice to the Jew,
Condemn the false, and magnify the true.
'Tis Israel's triumph, never more complete;
"Conviction" has brought victory, to France, defeat.
The world judges, France now bears the shame
And Dreyfus glories in unsullied name.
Let God avenge and man restrain his hate,
Jehovah's justice is immaculate;
Abide in faith and in the end we must
See France degraded, humbled in the dust.
To Dreyfus Vindicated
OLDIER of Justice-fighting with her sword
Since thine was broken! Who need now despair
To lead a hope forlorn against the throng?
For what did David dare
Before Goliath worthy this compare-
Thou in the darkness fronting leagued wrong?
What true and fainting cause shall not be heir
Of all thy courage-more than miser's hoard?
In times remote, when some preposterous ill
Man has not yet imagined, shall be King,
While comfortable Freedom nods—
And Three shall meet to slay the usurping thing,
Thy name recalled shall clinch their potent will,
And as they cry, "He won-what greater odds!"
They shall become as gods.
Ours, too, thy champions! Who shall dare to say
The sordid time doth lack of chivalry.
When men thus all renounce, all cast away,
To walk with martyrs through a flaming sea!
Picquart!-how jealously will Life patrol
The paths of peril whither he is sent.
Zola!-too early gone!
Whose taking even Death might well repent,
Though 'twas to enrich that greater Pantheon
Where dwell the spirits of the brave of soul.
Oh! tremble, all oppressors, where ye be-
Throne, Senate, mansion, mart, or factory;
One against many, many against few!
Ye poor, once crushed, that crush your own anew;
Ye vulgar rich, now risen from the mud,
Despoilers of the flower in the bud:
For justice is the orbit of God's day,
And He hath promised that He will repay.
ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.
MAN stood stained! France was one Alp of hate,
Pressing upon him with its iron weight.
In all the circle of the ancient sun,
There was no voice to speak for him—not one.
In all the world of men there was no sound
But of a sword flung broken to the ground.
""Tis done!" they said, "unless a felon soul
Can tear the leaves out of the Judgment Scroll."
Hell laughed a little season, then behold
How one by one the gates of God unfold!
Swiftly a sword by Unseen Forces hurled,
And then a man rising against the world!
Oh, import deep as life is, deep as time!
There is a Something sacred and sublime,
Moving behind the worlds, beyond our ken,
Weighing the stars, weighing the deeds of men.
Take heart, O world of sorrow, and be strong:
There is One greater than the whole world's wrong,
Be hushed before the high, benignant Power
That goes untarrying to the reckoning hour.
O men that forge the fetter, it is vain;
There is a Still Hand stronger than your chain,
'Tis no avail to bargain, sneer, and nod,
And shrug the shoulder for reply to God.
FRANCE has no dungeons in her island tomb
So deep that she may hide her injustice there;
The cry of innocence, despite her care,
Despite her roll of drums, her cannon's boom,
Is heard wherever human hearts have room
For sympathy; a sob upon the air,
Echoed and re-echoed everywhere,
It swells and swells, a prophecy of doom,
Thou latest victim of an ancient hate!
In agony so awfully alone,
The world forgets thee not, nor can forget.
Such martyrdoms she feels to be her own,
And sees involved in thine her larger fate;
She questions, and thy foes shall answer yet.
FLORENCE EARLE COATES.
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