| |
| LIKE a tender, loving maiden | |
| Dusting her devoted room | |
| When her sweetheart she awaiteth, | |
| Often dreaming on her broom. | |
| |
| So when stars beglamour heaven, | 5 |
| And the vesper-prayer’s said, | |
| On the eve before the Seder, | |
| Father takes some feathers, bread, | |
| |
| Rag, and wooden spoon, and taper; | |
| And he breaks the bread in seven, | 10 |
| And like the child with playthings, playing, | |
| He naïvely searches leaven. | |
| |
| First he hides in nook the bread-crumbs, | |
| Then like Jason on the quest | |
| For the glorified golden fleeces, | 15 |
| To the search for leaven, addrest, | |
| |
| By the lighted mystic taper, | |
| He like one a-dreaming prays; | |
| God be blest for sanctifying | |
| Man with leaven-searching ways. | 20 |
| |
| Then he locks the lips in silence, | |
| Like a Bismarck guarding tongue, | |
| Lest the deep-laid scheme of statecraft, | |
| By an ill-timed word go wrong. | |
| |
| And with gravest mien and broodings, | 25 |
| Ferrets out each hiding hole, | |
| Where he laid the treasured bread-crumbs, | |
| Sweeps them to their burning goal, | |
| |
| In the spoon, with tuft and feathers; | |
| Seals it with the rag, and lays | 30 |
| All away until the morrow, | |
| When, ere burning it, he prays: | |
| |
| “All the leaven of my dwelling, | |
| All I saw or did not see, | |
| All I did or didn’t banish, | 35 |
| Void, as dust of earth shall be.” | |
| |
| Then he muses on the Seder, | |
| Like a maid who dusts her room | |
| When her sweetheart she awaiteth, | |
| Often dreaming on the broom. | 40 |
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