THE POET OF ZIONISM
Naptali Herz Imber is known to all Jews of any education as the man who has written in the old Hebrew language the poems that best express the hope of Zion and that best serve as an inspiring battle cry in the struggle for a new Jerusalem. Zangwill has translated into English the Hebrew "Wacht Am Rhein," the most popular of Imber's poems, which is called The Watch on the Jordan. It is in four stanzas, the first of which is:
Like the crash of the thunder
Which splitteth asunder
The flame of the cloud,
On our ears ever falling,
A voice is heard calling
From Zion aloud;
"Let your spirits' desires
For the land of your sires