XXV
Mazeltov
O! sweet is your forgiveness, Dear, to me,
How sweet I think and think and cannot tell;
If Love’s a great, great thirst it is the well
Where I, a desert wanderer, drink gladly;
But if it’s health and life lived brave and free,
It is as pure white lilies that for a spell
Cool fever’s brow and of green meadows tell—
Such, Dear, has your forgiveness been to me.
And then the little word with which it came,
The Hebrew “mazeltov”—To you joy’s flame!
I hug it to my heart as they of yore
Who heard it, perchance, by the palace door
Of one who gloried in proud Babylon
And learned of love beneath a younger sun.