| |
| CHOSEN of old, the guardians of the Law | |
| (God’s word to mortals, cleaving right from wrong); | |
| Destined to serve the world; its priestly race | |
| Kept for that service strong. | |
| |
| Guarded of God through war and wilderness; | 5 |
| Holding the truth no other people saw; | |
| First of the nations to declare Him One; | |
| First to revere His Law! | |
| |
| Down from the ages of triumphant rule, | |
| Through the lost glory of a line of kings, | 10 |
| Bruised and lamenting in their brokenness— | |
| God heard their murmurings. | |
| |
| Scoffed at, they held their peace and overcame, | |
| Crowded by hate into the Ghetto’s pale, | |
| Sounded to Heaven their deathless harmony, | 15 |
| Born of a people’s wail. | |
| |
| Wide through the world that grief-born music rang, | |
| Hailed with a reverence to themselves denied; | |
| Caged in the wall by tyrants built, they sang, | |
| Flinging their genius wide. | 20 |
| |
| Out of the prisons of the Middle Age, | |
| Out of the reeking slums, they gave the light; | |
| Thinkers of lofty thought, ordained of God, | |
| Prophets to point the right. | |
| |
| By their unfetterable dreams of youth, | 25 |
| Joined to the genius that their race imbues, | |
| Chains have been sundered till to-day remain | |
| Few barriers round the Jews. | |
| |
| History emblazons them in bondage great, | |
| Splendid in art, philosophy and song, | 30 |
| Now in awed wonder does the world await | |
| The freedom of the strong. | |
| |
