Help me, O thou who wast my boyhood's guide,
I bend my exile-weary feet to thee,
Teach me the indivisible to divide,
Show me how three are one and One is three!
How Christ to save all men was crucified,
Yet I and mine are damned eternally.
Instruct me, Sage, why Virtue starves alone,
While falsehood step by step ascends the throne.
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON.
LITTLE POEMS IN PROSE.
I. THE EXODUS. (August 3, 1492.)
1. The Spanish noon is a blaze of azure fire, and the dusty
pilgrims crawl like an endless serpent along treeless plains and
bleached highroads, 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, well-nigh
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 youth with Christ-like countenance speaks comfortably to
father and brother, to maiden and wife. In his breast, his own
heart is broken.
4. The halt, the blind, are amid the train. Sturdy pack-horses
laboriously drag the tented wagons wherein lie the sick athirst
with fever.
5. The panting mules are urged forward with spur and goad; stuffed
are the heavy saddlebags with the wreckage of ruined homes.
6. Hark to the tinkling silver bells that adorn the tenderly-carried
silken scrolls.
7. In the fierce noon-glare a lad bears a kindled lamp; behind its
net-work of bronze the airs of heaven breathe not upon its faint
purple star.
8. Noble and abject, learned and simple, illustrious and obscure,
plod side by side, all brothers now, all merged in one routed army
of misfortune.
9. Woe to the straggler who falls by the wayside! no friend shall
close his eyes.
10. 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.
11. The townsman spits at their garments, the shepherd quits his
flock, the peasant his plow, to pelt with curses and stones; the
villager sets on their trail his yelping cur.
12. Oh the weary march, oh the uptorn roots of home, oh the
blankness of the receding goal!
13. Listen to their lamentation: They that ate dainty food are
desolate in the streets; they that 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.
14. Whither shall they turn? for the West hath cast them out, and
the East refuseth to receive.
15. O bird of the air, whisper to the despairing exiles, that
to-day, to-day, from the many-masted, gayly-bannered port of Palos,
sails the world-unveiling Genoese, to unlock the golden gates of
sunset and bequeath a Continent to Freedom!
II. TREASURES.
1. Through cycles of darkness the diamond sleeps in its coal-black
prison.
2. Purely incrusted in its scaly casket, the breath-tarnished pearl
slumbers in mud and ooze.
3. Buried in the bowels of earth, rugged and obscure, lies the
ingot of gold.
4. Long hast thou been buried, O Israel, in the bowels of earth;
long hast thou slumbered beneath the overwhelming waves; long hast
thou slept in the rayless house of darkness.
5. Rejoice and sing, for only thus couldst thou rightly guard the
golden knowledge, Truth, the delicate pearl and the adamantine
jewel of the Law.
III. THE SOWER.
1. Over a boundless plain went a man, carrying seed.
2. His face was blackened by sun and rugged from tempest, scarred
and distorted by pain. Naked to the loins, his back was ridged with
furrows, his breast was plowed with stripes.
3. From his hand dropped the fecund seed.
4. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a
sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree.
Its arms touched the ends of the horizon, the heavens were darkened
with its shadow.
5. It bare blossoms of gold and blossoms of blood, fruitage of
health and fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage, and a
serpent was coiled about its stem.
6. Under its branches a divinely beautiful man, crowned with
thorns, was nailed to a cross.
7. And the tree put forth treacherous boughs to strangle the Sower;
his flesh was bruised and torn, but cunningly he disentangled the
murderous knot and passed to the eastward.
8. Again there dropped from his hand the fecund seed.
9. And behold, instantly started from the prepared soil a blade, a
sheaf, a springing trunk, a myriad-branching, cloud-aspiring tree.
Crescent shaped like little emerald moons were the leaves; it bare
blossoms of silver and blossoms of blood, fruitage of health and
fruitage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage and a serpent was
coiled about its stem.
10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished
a drawn sword.
11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to
strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous
knot and passes on.
12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm
is not spent.
13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous
Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam;
tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel!