Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917.

By Edward Sydney Tybee

The Jews of Bucharest

“TAKE heed; the stairs are worn and damp!”

My soft-tongued southern guardian said,

And held more low his twinkling lamp

To light my cautious, downward tread.

Where that uncertain radiance fell

The bat in startled circles flew;

Sole tenant of the sunless cell

Our fathers fashioned for the Jew.

Yet, painted on the aching gloom,

I saw a hundred dreadful eyes,

As out of their forgotten tomb

Its pallid victims seemed to rise.

With fluttered heart and crisping hair,

I stood those crowding ghosts amid,

And thought what raptures of despair

The soundless granite walls had hid.

I saw their arsenal of crime:

The rack, the scourge, the gradual fire,

Where priestly hangmen of old time

Watched their long-tortured prey expire,

Then by dim warders darkling led

Through many a rocky corridor,

Like one that rises from the dead,

I passed into the light once more.

And does a careless brother say

We stir this ancient dust in vain,

When palaced Bucharest to-day

Sees the same devil loose again?

Again her busy highways wake

To the old persecuting cry

Of men who for their Master’s sake

His chosen kindred crucify.

There oft the midnight hours are loud

With echoes of pursuing feet;

As fired with bright zeal the crowd

Goes raving down the Ghetto’s street;

The broken shutter’s rending crash

That lets the sudden riot in,

And shows by those red torches’ flash,

The shrinking fugitive within.

But here are tales of deeper shame!

Of law insulted and defied.

While Force, usurping Justice’s name,

Takes boldly the oppressor’s side.

The bread whose bitterness so long,

These sons of hated race have known;

Familiar, oft-repeated wrong

That turns the living heart to stone.

Still Zion City lies forlorn:

And still the Stranger in our gates,

A servant to the younger born,

For his long-promised kingdom waits.

O, Brethren of the outer court,

Entreat him well and speak him fair;

The form that makes your thoughtless sport

Our coming Lord hath deigned to wear.