| |
| AS on the margin of Euphrates’ flood | |
| We wail’d our sins, and mourn’d an angry God; | |
| For God provoked, to strangers gave our land, | |
| And by a righteous Judge condemn’d we stand; | |
| Deep were our groans, our griefs without compare, | 5 |
| With ardent cries we rent the yielding air. | |
| Borne down with woes no friend at hand was found, | |
| No helper in the waste and barren ground: | |
| Only a mournful willow wither’d there, | |
| Its aged arms by winter storms made bare; | 10 |
| On this our lyres, now useless grown, we hung, | |
| Our lyres by us forsaken and unstrung! | |
| We sigh’d in chains, and sunk beneath our wo, | |
| Whilst more insulting our proud tyrants grow. | |
| From hearts oppress’d with grief they did require | 15 |
| A sacred anthem on the sounding lyre: | |
| Come, now, they cry, regale us with a song, | |
| Music and mirth the fleeting hours prolong. | |
| Shall Babel’s daughter hear that blessed sound? | |
| Shall songs divine be sung in heathen ground? | 20 |
| No, Heaven forbid that we should tune our voice, | |
| Or touch the lyre! whilst slaves we can’t rejoice. | |
| O Palestina! our once dear abode, | |
| Thou once wert blest with peace, and loved by God! | |
| But now art desolate, a barren waste, | 25 |
| Thy fruitful fields by thorns and weeds defaced. | |
| If I forget Judea’s mournful land, | |
| May nothing prosper that I take in hand! | |
| Or if I string the lyre, or tune my voice, | |
| Till thy deliverance cause me to rejoice; | 30 |
| O may my tongue forget her art to move, | |
| And may I never more my speech improve! | |
| Return, O Lord! avenge us of our foes, | |
| Destroy the men that up against us rose: | |
| Let Edom’s sons thy just displeasure know, | 35 |
| And, like us, serve some foreign conquering foe | |
| In distant realms; far from their native home, | |
| To which dear seat O let them never come! | |
| |
| Thou, Babel’s daughter! author of our wo, | |
| Shalt feel the stroke of some revenging blow: | 40 |
| Thy walls and towers be levell’d with the ground, | |
| Sorrow and grief shall in each soul be found: | |
| Thrice blest the man, who, that auspicious night, | |
| Shall seize thy trembling infants in thy sight; | |
| Regardless of thy flowing tears and moans, | 45 |
| And dash the tender babes against the stones. 1 | |
