| |
| “YES, he’s a Jew”—and then you shook your head | |
| As though the worst of all had just been said; | |
| As though that word expressed the height of crime, | |
| The depth of shame, the lowest moral slime. | |
| Yet, when you use that term reproach to cast | 5 |
| You show your ignorance of what the past | |
| To student eyes reveals; how Moses led | |
| In safety through the desert them that fled | |
| From Egypt’s bondage; how he planned the laws | |
| That after ages hailed with loud applause | 10 |
| To guide the race in whom no power subdued | |
| Their loyalty to God; aye, from that brood— | |
| That storm-tossed people, oft enslaved in chains, | |
| Have sprung a line of men, in arms and brains | |
| The peers of any—white, or black, or brown; | 15 |
| Whose deeds in camp or court e’er won renown. | |
| When Celt, or Gaul, and Saxon chased the deer, | |
| And slew their prey with simple bow and spear, | |
| And dwelt in holes in hillsides, like the lairs | |
| Of prowling beasts, and naught of fame was theirs, | 20 |
| The Jew in Orient lands had read the stars, | |
| Had loved with Venus, and had fought with Mars; | |
| Had won with voice and sword the crown of fame, | |
| In field and forum earned an honored name. | |
| And when the Celt and Saxon ruled the world, | 25 |
| And the blue smoke from peaceful chimneys curled, | |
| Beside the generation that was new | |
| There walked the scion of the ancient Jew. | |
| When foes harassed and threatened Britain Great | |
| A Jew’s hand ’twas that steered the ship of State, | 30 |
| And when the bugle sounded war’s alarm | |
| And myriad men from factory and farm | |
| Took up the sword to keep this Nation whole, | |
| The names of loyal Jews were on the roll. | |
| “Yes; he’s a Jew,” O pigmy of a clan | 35 |
| What say you when ’tis said “Yes, he’s a Man”? | |
| Does not that statement cover all the test | |
| That can of any mortal be expressed? | |
| Hark you—you simple-headed bigot hear | |
| A whispered caution in your dullard ear: | 40 |
| Do you know that Christ, of whom you sue | |
| Forgiveness, was a persecuted Jew? | |
| |
