Page:The Soul of a Century.djvu/97

 Around me Jehovah rose with angered glares, I heard the prophets’ voices that strangely shook, On the Levite’s burdened backs, amidst trumpet blares The covenant shone from the bloody brook.

I saw where Ruth once passed through the fields of grain And on far Caramel’s, pleasant sloping side, My fantasy wove on its charm again, More beautiful than Solomon's cloak and pride.

Yon bluish lake, of biblical Simon’s fame How you have pierced my soul, you distant height, Where the Master wrapped himself with a blinding flame And Golgotha trembled with a bloody fright.

Like a foreign bind-week that has been planted deep About a homegrown bush, entwines its stem, And weaves through blossoms that impertinently creep On every side, to the bush-tops crowning hem.

Thus has the soul of Palestine from childhood days Embraced us with its hundreds of varied chains And slowly changed our beings and our ways, Giving its imprint to our dreams and brains.

The Jewish tribe can proudly raise its head Above all those who would besmear its birth For with its soul, it slowly overspread All men and slowly reached all points on Earth.

Our God, Our Saviour, the birth of man, Our paradise, our Hell, our views of life, Each thought with which, we would the unknown scan Has parts at least of Hebrew faith and strife.

Thus I grew up with dreams of you, my Palestine, But oft your foreign image crossed my thought The glaring light of Suns that elsewhere shine The breath of foreign races that you brought.

It seemed I felt a different blood in me New, different thought, emotions, sentiment, And differently, than where the palms grow past the sea My scenes were colored by our blue-tinged firmament.