| |
| OH, harp of Judah! wake again! | |
| Can no one deftly touch thy strings | |
| To scatter far the sacred strain | |
| Which from divinest patience springs! | |
| Have all the strife-sown troublous years | 5 |
| No joys for happy song to cast? | |
| Can love distil no hope from tears, | |
| Or steal no beauty from the past? | |
| |
| Has music lost its spell and power | |
| To summon hopes that only rest? | 10 |
| Endowed with truths, our lasting dower, | |
| That mock the ages’ wear and test; | |
| Can no heart-stirring melody | |
| Imbued with light and touched with fire, | |
| Flow from a nation proud and free | 15 |
| Whose past must urge them to aspire? | |
| |
| Reproach, an ignominious sea, | |
| Can follow in our wake no more; | |
| The poisoned waves of calumny | |
| Are washed away from Freedom’s shore. | 20 |
| The justice of a nobler age | |
| Has reached and raised our scattered race; | |
| Our history shows a fairer page, | |
| Our future wears a brighter face. | |
| |
| The rooted weeds of narrow thought | 25 |
| Which closely cling, or idly spread, | |
| Which ignorance has sown and wrought, | |
| Are crushed and buried with the dead. | |
| A loftier sense of heavenly things, | |
| A wider view of human life | 30 |
| Have fashioned tolerance: which brings | |
| Its own repose to cast off strife. | |
| |
| Beyond man’s vain imaginings, | |
| Is Israel’s faith that never dies, | |
| The boon of slaves—the pride of Kings— | 35 |
| Its meanings make the nations wise, | |
| And thro’ the mists of ages gone, | |
| Its God-stamped visions still appear | |
| As in the Bible’s earliest dawn, | |
| Supremely true, divinely clear! | 40 |
| |
| And who asserts that Judah’s claim | |
| To any chosen land is o’er? | |
| When all the earth contains her fame | |
| That spreads and widens evermore; | |
| The truths that sanctify her creed | 45 |
| Shall scatter hopes where’er they shine, | |
| Until all men shall feel the need | |
| Of her own unity divine. | |
| |
| So wake, my harp, my fingers press | |
| Thy rust-worn strings, while fancy longs | 50 |
| To dower with melodiousness, | |
| The burden of unuttered songs; | |
| My faltering touch may reach in vain | |
| The music of my sacred themes, | |
| Still Truth may charm the feeble strain | 55 |
| And lend its sweetness to my dreams! | |
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