"I've been feeling sick!" Philip replied truthfully.
"Sit thee down then and open thy machzer! It is at this place one holds! Omit thou no word!"
"I hope you are feeling all right, tatte?"
"How should I feel? 'Tis well with me!"
Around his head the chanting and the weeping gathered volume. The voice of Mr. Herman on the pulpit was choked with crying and his usual ornamentations were now wholly absent from his delivery. The hands of Mr. Linsky thundered contrition. The face of Reb Yonah was drenched in tears. To Philip it seemed that the voices of all these moaning, swaying men had been lifted for age beyond age. It was as if he stood in a dark country where large boulders stood greyly from the uneven ground; the air was full of lamentations; the sky was compact with lightless cloud. If but the dome were rifted, if but through that blue division there came among these boulders and this lamentation the sharp shaft of wind—the boulders would subside into sand, there would be no lamentation; there would be flowers in green hollows, and water in willowy places; if but the dome were rifted, if but a wind blew....
Philip was tired of vain imaginings. As long prayer succeeded long prayer, the tedium of the day gripped him. He remembered the Milton in his pocket and, with a thrill of dangerous delight, drew it forth carefully. Oh, it was important to take the utmost care! Good Lord, if he were found out, what on earth would happen? Could anything happen proportionate to the crime? His machzer, fortunately, was a large, protective book! He leaned the Milton against its yellow pages and turned stealthily to "Comus." Was there any poetry like "Comus" in the world? What savour it gained from contact with these present sights and sounds! How fair was the lady, and how the rhymes were like bells at morning!
Enraptured he turned page upon page of "Comus." "Comus" was ended. Reb Monash was shaking in his corner there, by the Ark, his face pale with the fast. All was safe. He turned to "Allegro" and "Penseroso." Never had he known poetry to taste so fresh, like cheese and fine bread among the hills. He turned to the "Ode on the morning of Christ's Nativity."
See how from far upon the eastern road
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet....
What lines were these, flawless in music, divinely simple!
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet....