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| OH! I love to roam in fancy o’er the hills where Zion stood, | |
| There to watch the daughter Zion weeping o’er her widowhood; | |
| She was like the bride of beauty storied in the Song of Songs, | |
| Who was queen of all the maidens, peer among the lily throngs. | |
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| Sharon’s lily, bride of beauty how I love to think of thee, | 5 |
| For thy lips were threads of crimson and thy neck of ivory, | |
| For thine eyes seemed pools of water, clear as Heshbon’s melted dew, | |
| And thy lips were dripping honey, so I love to think of you. | |
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| Oh! for all the wise king’s glory who was Israel’s paragon, | |
| He was like a stately cedar, cedar of the Lebanon: | 10 |
| I can see his litter lifted by his expert men of war, | |
| As it passed sweet odor drifted, myrrh and spikenard through its door. | |
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| Israel wedded to its glory, like a garden to its flowers, | |
| When the north wind blew upon it, it was sweet with scented showers; | |
| For the bride, the Rose of Sharon, was the land of Palestine, | 15 |
| There the fig tree grew and ripened, there the apple and the vine. | |
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| There sweet cinnamon and saffron and the incense bearing trees, | |
| There the calamus and spices perfumed each passing breeze; | |
| There grew myrrh and there the aloe, there the nard and henna bloom, | |
| There to die on Zion’s bosom made of death the sweetest doom. | 20 |
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| Oh! how I would love to see thee as thou wast when in thy prime, | |
| When thy marble pavements echoed with the sandals keeping time | |
| To the chorus of the Levites as they climbed the temple steep, | |
| Singing psalms and hallelujahs, with their ranks a thousand deep. | |
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| Yet I would not weep, O daughter, for a better day must near, | 25 |
| And I would not back to Zion, for the prophets made this clear, | |
| That the world shall be our garden where shall blossom Zion’s tree, | |
| This, the “tree of life,” the Torah, which shall bloom eternally. | |
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| Then, away with clouds of ashes and the weeds of widowhood, | |
| For the world’s a greater temple than the shrine where Zion stood; | 30 |
| And I would not back to Zion and I would not back again, | |
| For our God has made our mission not for us but for all men. | |
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