SONNET 239.
FROM PSALM CXXXVII.
“Em Babylonia sobre os rios, quando.”
Beside the streams of Babylon, in tears
Of vain desire, we sat; remembering thee,
O hallow’d Sion! and the vanish’d years,
When Israel’s chosen sons were blest and free:
Our harps, neglected and untuned, we hung
Mute on the willows of the stranger’s land;
When songs, like those that in thy fanes we sung,
Our foes demanded from their captive band.
“How shall our voices, on a foreign shore,”
(We answer’d those whose chains the exile wore,)
“The songs of God, our sacred songs, renew?
If I forget, midst grief and wasting toil,
Thee, O Jerusalem! my native soil!
May my right hand forget its cunning too!”