THE EXPULSION FROM SPAIN, 1492
LOOK, they move! No comrades near but curses;
Tears gleam in beards of men sore with reverses;
Flowers from fields abandoned, loving nurses,
Fondly deck the women’s raven hair.
Faded, scentless flowers that shall remind them
Of their precious homes and graves behind them;
Old men, clasping Torah-scrolls, unbind them,
Lift the parchment flags and silent lead.
Mock not with thy light, O sun, our morrow;
Cease not, cease not, O ye songs of sorrow;
From what land a refuge can we borrow,
Weary, thrust out, God-forsaken we?
Could ye, suff’ring souls, peer through the Future,
From despair ye would awake to rapture;
Lo! The Genoese boldly steers to capture
Freedom’s realm beyond an unsailed sea![26]
L. A. FRANKL.
(Trans. by M. D. Louis.)
THE EXODUS
(AUGUST 3, 1492)
THE Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and bleached high-roads, through rock-split ravines and castellated, cathedral-shadowed towns.
2. The hoary patriarch, wrinkled as an almond shell, bows painfully upon his staff. The beautiful young mother, ivory-pale, wellnigh swoons beneath her burden; in her large enfolding arms nestles her sleeping babe, round her knees flock her little ones with bruised and bleeding feet. ‘Mother, shall we soon be there?’
3. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst with fever.
4. The panting mules are urged forward by spur and goad; stuffed are the heavy saddle-bags with the wreckage of ruined homes.
5. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly carried silken scrolls.
6. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure, plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army of misfortune.
7. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! No friend shall close his eyes.
8. They leave behind the grape, the olive, and the fig; the vines they planted, the corn they sowed, the garden-cities of Andalusia and Aragon, Estremadura and La Mancha, of Granada and Castile; the altar, the hearth, and the grave of their fathers.
9. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his flock, the peasant his plough, to pelt with curses and stones; the villager sets on their trail his yelping cur.
10. Oh, the weary march! oh, the uptorn roots of home! oh, the blankness of the receding goal!
11. Listen to their lamentations. They that ate dainty food are desolate in the streets; they were reared in scarlet embrace dunghills. They flee away and wander about. Men say among the nations, They shall no more sojourn there; our end is near, our days are full, our doom is come. (Lam. 4. 5, 15, 18.)
12. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and the East refuseth to receive.
EMMA LAZARUS, 1883.