Has drawn in glowing and immortal colors,
And held before the wond'ring eyes of men!
The gentle sage, the friend of prince and poet,
Whose every word ennobled and refined,
Who seemed to stand upon some mental summit
And smile upon the factions of mankind.
Unsightly and deformed the suff'ring body,
But, from the thoughtful eyes and noble face
The glory of the soul shone out in splendor,—
A glowing gem in its translucent case!
And all the earth appeared to him in beauty,
For o'er his heart-strings trembled, even then,
The heav'ly melody with which his offspring
Soothed and enslaved the ardent hearts of men.
O, monarch in the realm of thought and reason!
O, high-priest in the temple of the soul!
Thy hymn of progress, tolerance and freedom,—
Through endless ages shall its echoes roll!
Thou couldst not prove to us that mental culture
And Judaism never are at strife,
Nor show us immortality more clearly
Than by the beauty of thy glorious life!
A century has passed on restless pinions
Since death removed thine image from the earth; An era of enlightenment and progress
Has taught us to appreciate thy worth;
Look down and guide us from thy home in heaven
To nobler deeds than we have ever known;
The purest thought-the broader field of action
Should mark thy people, Moses Mendelssohn!
OD said: "I will make a poet,"
And a soul was sent below
With the singer's wings of rapture,
With the sufferer's weight of woe.
God laid on the eyes the poet's
Awful gift of second sight,
On the restless, questioning spirit,
All the blackness of the night.
On the body, pangs of torture,
Hell's own pains and love's sharp sting; Doubt you woe must dow'r the poet? Hush, draw close and hear him sing!
NOR life nor death had any peace for thee,
Seeing thy mother cast thee forth, a prey
To wind and water, till we bade thee stay
And rest, a pilgrim weary of the sea.
But now it seems that on thine effigy
Thy very host an impious hand would lay:
Go then and wander, praising on thy way
The proud Republic's hospitality!
Yet oft with us wreathed brow must suffer wrong, The sad Enchanter of the land of Weir
Is still uncrowned, unreverenced, and we fear The Lords of Gold above the Lords of Song, Were it not strange, then, should we honor more The sweet-mouthed singer of a foreign shore?
GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK.
SON of a mystic race, he came
When Europe faltered at one name,
And, to his youthful eyes, the sun
Darkened before Napoleon.
France brought his freedom, but it brought
To Germany the years that wrought
Her shame, her bondage, her despair-
Thus in the quiet Rhineland air
A deep division drew apart
The fighter's and the poet's heart.
The poet heard the linden croon
Tragic old ditties to the moon,
And sang with clear authentic voice
The music of his country's choice.
He knew the forest of romance,
The haunting wail, the elfin dance,
The wounded heart, the magic lance,
And first on German Islands he
Heard echoes of the Odyssey
Sonorous in the Northern Sea.
Then, as he dreamed, the loud world's brood
Cried out, the visionary mood
Broke, and the poet in his fear
Bade poisoned arrows sing and sear.
God touched him. From his couch of pain
He sang, he fought, and in his strain
Thunder of olden battles stirred
By prophets in Judea heard.
God touched him, but his long repose
Is broken still by clamorous foes.
Yet battle dies, and song alone
With the Eternal is at one—
Great verse that is the warder of
Justice and wisdom, truth and love,
And of that beauty in all lands,
Not seen of eyes, not made with hands,
Whose harmony can so control
The sanctuary of the soul,
That we must know its prophets still
The child of a diviner will.
To Heinrich Heine
AWAKE to lyric rapture once again,
Great German bard! Not in resurgent
France
Shall thy proud spirit rally from its trance
But in the Rhineland where the sabres glance;
Where spring to arms, each day, a myriad men.-
There now they need thy patriotic pen:
Its caustic wit, so dagger-keen and bold
That erstwhile smote with such relentless zeal
Yet had the art of tenderness to heal.
Once more thy sweet-voiced Lorelei shall steal
Into the nation's heart, whose tales were told
By thee, dear Troubador, in rhymes of gold-
And then thy matchless minstrelsy shall bring
The Fatherland swift healing on its wing.
GEORGE ALEXANDER KOHÚT.
"TRUTH is an idol," spake the Christian age.
"Thou shalt not worship Truth divorced from
Truth is but God's reflection: Look above!"
So Pascal wrote, and still we trace the page.
"Truth is divine," said Plato, "but on high
She dwells, and few may be her ministers,
For truth is sad and lonely and diverse;
Heal thou the weakling with a generous lie!"
But thou in Truth delightedst! Thou of soul
As subtle-shimmering as the rainbow mist,
And still in all her service didst persist.
For me One truth thou livedst, but the Whole.
MARY DARMESTETER.
The Jews' Cemetery on the Lido A TRACT of land swept by the salt seafoam,
Fringed with acacia flowers and billowy deep,
In meadow-grasses, where tall poppies sleep,
And bees athirst for wilding honey roam,
How many a bleeding heart hath found its home,
Under these hillocks which the seamews sweep!
Here knelt an outcast race to curse and weep,
Age after age, 'neath heaven's unanswering dome.
Sad is the place and solemn. Grave by grave,
Lost in the dunes, with rank weeds overgrown,
Pines in abandonment; as though unknown,
Uncared for, lay the dead, whose records pave
This path neglected; each forgotten stone Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
The Jewish Cemetery at Newport HOW strange it seems! These Hebrews in their
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,
Silent beside the never-silent waves,
At rest in all this moving up and down!
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