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| WE sat us down by Babel’s streams | |
| And dreamed soul-saddening memory’s dreams; | |
| And dark thoughts o’er our spirits crept | |
| Of Sion—and we wept, we wept! | |
| Our harps upon the willows hung | 5 |
| Silent, and tuneless, and unstrung; | |
| For they who wrought our pains and wrongs, | |
| Asked us for Sion’s pleasant songs. | |
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| How can we sing Jehovah’s praise | |
| To those who Baal’s altars raise? | 10 |
| How warble Judah’s freeborn hymns, | |
| With Babel’s fetters on our limbs? | |
| How chant thy lays, dear Fatherland, | |
| To strangers on a foreign strand? | |
| Ah no! we’ll bear grief’s keenest string, | 15 |
| But dare not Sion’s anthems sing. | |
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| Place us where Sharon’s roses blow; | |
| Place us where Siloe’s waters flow; | |
| Place us on Lebanon, that waves | |
| Its cedars o’er our fathers’ graves: | 20 |
| Place us upon that holy mount, | |
| Where stand the temple, gleams the fount; | |
| And love and joy shall loose our tongues, | |
| To warble Sion’s pleasant songs. | |
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