Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/64

52 But the rude Chaldean peasants
 * Uprose against the seer,

And drave him forth—else never came
 * This Talmud legend here.

With Sarah his wife, and his servants,
 * Whom he ruled with potent hand.

The Patriarch planted his vineyards
 * In the Canaanitish land;

With his wife—the sterile, but lovely,
 * The fame of whose beauty grew

Till there was no land in Asia
 * But tales of the treasure knew.

In his lore the sage lived—learning
 * High thought from the starlit skies;

But heedful, too, of the light at home,
 * And the danger of wistful eyes;

Till the famine fell on his corn-fields,
 * And sent him forth again,

To seek for a home in Egypt,—
 * The land of the amorous men.