"No matter; the metre and air are sweet and melancholy. I will have it translated into Latin hexameter by your countryman Josephus, one of these days, if you like."
"Name him not, the arch-sycophant, who lives by flattering tyrants," whispered Judith with a fierce tone and glance, before which Zoilus blanched and trembled.
"Fair Judith, be not angry; I meant it only in joke."
"Jokes at the expense of others' feelings deserve not the award of wit," said Ephrem, who, standing up, declaimed the following with a vehement earnestness:
Ode of the Exiled Jew to Jerusalem.
I.
Thy heart, Jerusalem! is desert and drear,
Thy children no more in thy bosom appear;
In the land of the Gentiles they sigh and they moan,
While thou, dear mother! dost pine all alone.
II.
Thy turrets, and temple, and beautiful gate—
The gems that shone bright in the crown of thy state—
Like the ark of the prophets, no longer remain,
And the Philistine foxes thy beauty profane!
III.
The gold harp of David awakens no more
Thy echoes where pontiff and people adore;
Thy silver-voiced trumpets are silent and dead,
No smoke from thy temple ascends overhead.
IV.
Like the weeds on the beach by the ocean-tide hurled,
Thy daughters are cast on the shores of the world;
Thy eye's filled with weeping, thy heart's filled with woe,
And thy brow once so fair in the dust is laid low!
V.
The dust of thy kings in thy bosom remains
Where the hoofs of the Gentiles insult thy sad plains,
And their lamps sacrilegious invade the deep glooms
That wrap them to rest in thy Valley of Tombs!
VI.
Jerusalem, mother! we pray unto Him
Who has filled up thy chalice of woe to the brim:
"A curse on the tyrants whose impious hands
Have seized thee, denied thee, and bound thee in bands!
VII.
"O send down, Jehovah! by night and by day,
Thy blight on apostate impostors, we pray;
The Christian deceivers, whose God we nailed fast [Footnote 172]
To the tree of the cross as a sail to the mast!
VIII.
"Since the hour he was crucified outside thy gate,
His blood like a poison has mixed in thy fate!
May the God of thy fathers, the God of our race,
From thy forehead, Jerusalem, wipe the disgrace!
[Footnote 172: The Jews cursed the Christians three times a day in their synagogues, says Epiphanius in this direful form, "Send down thy curse, God! on the Christians.">[
During the delivery of the first verses tears flowed down the cheeks of Judith. During the last part fire seemed to flash from her eyes.
After Ephrem others were induced to sing or deliver pieces in the languages of their respective countries. In the reign of Domitian, the Sarmatians, Dacians, Parthians, and the German tribes beyond the Rhine had been completely subdued. Agricola had broken on the Grampians the fierce hardihood of the tribes beyond the Tay and Tweed. The success of the Jewish war in the two preceding reigns had scattered that unfortunate race over the earth. We can thence understand how on a large estate like that of Aurelian so many nationalities met. Leaving them to amuse themselves, we will follow Zoilus.
He left the hall quietly, crossed the outer court and a paddock between it and the villa, and entered through a low-arched door into the garden behind it. Between this garden and the villa was the peristyle, a rectangular area so named from having stone pillars around it. In its centre was a xystus with box and other shrubs, shaped like tigers, lions, and galleys. The deepening shades of evening brought out their figures with weird-like indistinctness. Judith the Jewess stood between two pillars, and as she stood, tall, straight, and motionless, might have passed for the guardian goddess of the place.