| Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917. | | | | The Chosen Ones of Israel | | By Park Benjamin |
| | | THE CHOSEN ones of Israel are scatter’d far and wide; | |
| Where flows the lordly Tiber, where rolls the Atlantic tide— | |
| By Danube’s winding waters, by Hudson’s crystal springs, | |
| Dwell the myriad descendants of the Prophets and the Kings, | |
| Abroad along the valleys are their habitations found— | 5 |
| They are hunters in the forest, and tillers of the ground— | |
| The rising sun beholds them in torrid realms afar | |
| And on their broken legions looks down the northern star. | |
| In the old world’s crowded cities, in the prairies of the new, | |
| Unchanged amid all changes, to their faith forever true— | 10 |
| Alike by Niger’s fountains and by Niagara’s flood | |
| Still flow, unmix’d, the currents of the grand, heroic blood. | |
| Ye mourn your lasting exile, your temple strewn in dust, | |
| Yet forget not ye the promise of the righteous and the just— | |
| Ye know ye shall be gathered, from every clime and shore, | 15 |
| And be again the chosen of Jehovah evermore, | |
| From Assyria, Egypt, Elam—from Patmos, Cush, Shinar— | |
| From Hamath, and the islands of foreign seats afar— | |
| From all the earth’s four corners, where Israel’s children roam, | |
| Shall the dispers’d of Judah throng to their long promis’d home, | 20 |
| And again like some high mountain whose tops are crown’d with snow, | |
| Shall the Temple’s thousand turrets in the golden sunset glow— | |
| And again before their altars shall the congregations stand, | |
| On thy plains, O lov’d Jerusalem! the happy, holy land! | |
| And it shall come to pass that the remnant in that day, | 25 |
| Upon the Lord of Hosts above, the great I Am, shall stay; | |
| And the escap’d of Jacob, from the paths which they have trod, | |
| Shall return to Him that smote them—your fathers’ mighty God! | | | | |
|
|
