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| “OLD Rabbi, what tales dost thou pour in mine ear, | |
| What visions of glory, what phantoms of fear, | |
| Of a God, all the gods of the Roman above, | |
| A mightier than Mars, a more ancient than Jove? | |
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| “Let me see but His splendors, I then shall believe. | 5 |
| ’Tis the senses alone that can never deceive. | |
| But show me your Idol, if earth be His shrine, | |
| And your Israelite God shall, old dreamer, be mine!” | |
| |
| It was Trajan that spoke, the stoical sneer | |
| Still played on his features sublime and severe, | 10 |
| For, round the wild world that stooped to his throne, | |
| He knew but one god, and himself was that one! | |
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| “The God of our forefathers,” low bowed the Seer, | |
| “Is unseen by the eye, is unheard by the ear; | |
| He is Spirit and knows not the body’s dark chain; | 15 |
| Immortal His nature, eternal His reign. | |
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| “He is seen in His power, when the storm is abroad; | |
| In His justice, when guilt by His thunders is awed; | |
| In His mercy, when mountain and valley and plain | |
| Rejoice in His sunshine, and smile in His rain.” | 20 |
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| “Those are dreams,” said the monarch, “wild fancies of old; | |
| But what God can I worship, when one I behold? | |
| Can I kneel to the lightning, or bow to the wind? | |
| Can I worship the shape, that but lives in the mind?” | |
| |
| “I shall show thee the herald He sends from His throne.” | 25 |
| Through the halls of the palace the Rabbi led on, | |
| Till above them was spread but the sky’s sapphire dome, | |
| And, like surges of splendor, beneath them lay Rome. | |
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| And towering o’er all, in the glow of the hour, | |
| The Capitol shone, earth’s high centre of power; | 30 |
| A thousand years glorious, yet still in its prime; | |
| A thousand years more, to be conquered of Time. | |
| |
| But the West was now purple, the eve was begun; | |
| Like a monarch at rest, on the hills lay the sun; | |
| Above him the clouds their rich canopy rolled, | 35 |
| With pillars of diamond, and curtains of gold. | |
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| The Rabbi’s proud gesture was turned to the orb: | |
| “O King! let that glory thy worship absorb!” | |
| “What! worship that sun, and be blind by the gaze?” | |
| No eye but the eagle’s could look on that blaze.” | 40 |
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| “Ho! Emperor of earth, if it dazzles thine eye | |
| To look on that orb, as it sinks from the sky,” | |
| Cried the Rabbi, “what mortal could dare to see | |
| The Sovereign of him, and the Sovereign of thee!” | |
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