Upon the willows by the river,

Would throb beneath my touch and quiver
With the old song-enchanted spell
Of Israel!

Oh, that the large prophetic Voice
Would make my reed-piped throat its choice!
All ears should prick, all hearts should spring
To hear me sing

The burden of the isles, the word
Assyria knew, Damascus heard,

When, like the wind, while cedars shake,
Isaiah spake.

For 1 would frame a song to-day
Winged like a bird to cleave its way
O'er land and sea that spread between,
To where a Queen

Sits with a triple coronet.

Genius and Sorrow both have set
Their diadems above the gold-
A Queen three-fold!

To her the forest lent its lyre,
Hers are the sylvan dews, the fire
Of Orient suns, the mist-wreathed gleams
Of mountain streams.

She, the imperial Rhine's own child,
Takes to her heart the wood-nymph wild,
The gipsy Pelech, and the wide

White Danube's tide.

She who beside an infant's bier
Long since resigned all hope to hear,
The sacred name of "Mother" bless

Her childlessness,

Now from a people's sole acclaim
Receives the heart-vibrating name,
And "Mother, Mother, Mother!" fills
The echoing hills.

Yet who is he who pines apart,
Estranged from that maternal heart,
Ungraced, unfriended, and forlorn,
The butt of scorn?

An alien in his land of birth,

An outcast from his brethren's earth,
Albeit with theirs his blood mixed well
When Plevna fell?

When all Roumania's chains were riven,
When unto all his sons was given
The hero's glorious reward,

Reaped by the sword,

Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains Hung heaviest, within whose veins

The oldest blood of freedom streamed,

Still unredeemed?

EMMA LAZARUS.

Lines on Carmen Sylva

REMBLING old men are stamm'ring

TREME

Scarce can their anguish tell

Whisp'ring the ancient Hebrew,

The "Hear, O Israel!"

Some little Jew is falling,

Clubbed in his narrow pale

The Queen is singing sweetly
Songs of the Nightingale.

Watchmen are growing fretful,

Why should they longer wait?
Hurry the homeless wanderers

Through the next dark suffering-gate.
What though anchors are lifted,
What though poor exiles flee-

Carmen Sylva is warbling

An Ode to Humanity.

EMMA LAZarus.

The Russian Jewish Rabbi

I

OLD and gray, his shoulders bent,

Tall and meagre like a cane,

To my door came up a man,
When the day began to wane.
In one hand he held a staff,

While the other wiped a tear,
Like the leaves on swinging boughs

He had shrunk from cold and fear. "Peace to you," he quietly said,

And a tear had filled his eye;
On his face I noticed grief,
From his heart I heard a sigh.
"Can you take me 'neath your roof?
I am tired, and weak and old;
Just like death, severe and sharp,
Crude and merciless the cold,
I am hungry, bare and poor,
Orphan-like I am on soil
For I cannot tug for life

By my hands, or mental toil.
I had been a teacher once

And our children I had taught; God's my witness, I had e'er Perfectly my duties wrought. Now my children have grown up,

Like grand flowers they still grow, And I drink the bitter cup,

Suffering in tears and woe."

Silent then became the man.

And the tears have rolled and rolled.

On his sad and wrinkled face

A reproach I could behold,

This was meant for him, whose heart
In the careless body sleeps,

Who is merciless, unmoved,

When a struggler sighs and weeps.

II

When in slumber earth was hushed,
My fatigued and suff'ring guest
Finally in pleasant sleep

Found forgetfulness and rest.

The night's queen, the wingy dream,
Looked at him and sweetly smiled,
Carried him at once away,

Where he lived while yet a child.
Here's his father's little house,

Where he passed his childhood days, Where his heart had freely breathed 'Mong his friends, and mates at plays. Here's the temple, where he oft

With his father ran to pray, "Tell me, dearest, why we haste," To his 'pa, he used to say. "Child, the Sabbath-hour is near, And the temple's open wide,There our souls will find repose,

Far from care's and struggling's tide." In the dismal synagog

Darkness, gloom reigns over all.

Down the rigid sexton goes

To the corner. . . By the wall

Stands a candle on a shelf;

Fast to it he makes his way,

Then, by turn, he lights each lamp,
And, when done, he walks away.
Thus the gloomy synagog

Soon assumed an aspect bright;
And the boy with eager eyes

Follows ev'ry trembling light.
"Where's the candle and the shaft,
That, like in a fairy land,
Instantly created light?

Told in darkness, 'Be there light?'
By the customary hand,
By the hand that used the light
It was slip-shod cast aside!"

III

Jewish, tired and suff'ring Rabbi,
Such, poor teacher, is your fate!
Keeper of the Lord's commandments,
Was your toil not holy, great?
Have you not with holy blazes

Lit our children's heart and soul?
Have you not, inspired like prophets,
Taught them life's true end and goal?
Rabbi, did you not instruct them

To believe, to love and wait,

To be honest, true and faithful,

"With a heart for any fate?"

Well, and now?... With mute affliction
You are wandering alone,

O'er your head a fearful darkness,

In your heart a deathly moan.