University of Virginia Library

I.

The days of Rabbi Ben Ephraim
Were two score years and ten, the day
The hangman call'd at last for him,
And he privily fled from Cordova.
Drop by drop, he had watch'd the cup
Of the wine of bitterness fill'd to the brim;
Drop by drop, he had drain'd it up;
And the time was an evil time for him.
An evil time! For Jehovah's face
Was turn'd in wrath from His chosen race,
And the daughter of Judah must mourn,
Whom His anger had left, in evil case,
To be dogg'd by death from place to place,
With garments bloody and torn.
The time of the heavy years, from of old
By the mouth of His servant the Prophet foretold,
In the days of Josiah the king,
When the Lord upon Jacob his load should bring,
And the hand of Heaven, in the day of His ire,
Be heavy and hot upon son and sire,
Till from out of the holes into which they were driven
Their bones should be strown to the host of Heaven
Whose bodies were burn'd in the fire.
Rabbi Ben Ephraim, day by day
(As the hangman, beating up his bounds
Thro' the stifled Ghetto's sinks and stews,
Or the Arch Inquisitor, going his rounds,
Was pleased to pause, and pick, and choose,
—Too sure of his game, which could not stray,
To miss the luxury of delay)
Had mark'd with a moody indignation
The abomination of desolation,
With the world to witness, and none to gainsay,
Set up in the midst of the Holy Nation,
And the havoc, which Heaven refused to stay,
In the course of his horrible curse move on,
Where, sometimes driven in trembling crews,
Sometimes singly one by one,
Israel's elders were beckon'd away
To the place where the Christians burn the Jews:
Till he, because that his wealth was known,
And because the king had debts to pay,
Was left, at the last, almost alone
Of all his people in Cordova,
A living man picked out by fate
To bear, and beware of, the daily jibe,
And add the same to the sum of the hate,
Made his on behalf of a slaughter'd tribe.