Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/39

Rh the catastrophe ! In place of the personal we have the drama of the universal. Love is only a flash now, a dream caught sight of and at once renounced at a higher claim.

asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for her princely wooer and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast.

Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,—fortitude and courage, and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are worth living and dying for.

The Jews pass by in procession—men, women, and children—on their way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the