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| THE MUSE, that first lent grace to gratitude, | |
| Voicing a rhythmic prayer from thankful hearts, | |
| Long since, when passion lisped in accents crude, | |
| Nor knew its handmaid in this art of arts— | |
| Has sounded many a measure through the days, | 5 |
| In stately epic and in roundelays. | |
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| The sack of cities, the brave deeds of men, | |
| The doom of Gods, the majesty of Kings; | |
| Strange mysteries beyond our earthly ken, | |
| And gentle fancy’s sweet imaginings— | 10 |
| These have the poets woven into rhyme, | |
| To make the past throb in the present time. | |
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| But I will weave the laurel of my rhyme | |
| To crown the living with an honor due; | |
| That one, who fearless in the trembling time | 15 |
| Stands forth his people’s bulwark, strong and true, | |
| May know the muse that graced the ancient days | |
| Has not forgotten how to laud and praise. | |
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| If we have grown into such gracious worth, | |
| And are assembled in this galaxy | 20 |
| To laud the work to which these years gave birth, | |
| Is it not fitting that our thoughts shall be | |
| Fashioned to form, a grateful aureole | |
| For him whose labor led us to this goal? | |
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| Let mine the pride and pleasure be to-night | 25 |
| To sing his worth, who is our guide and friend; | |
| Who lifts a beacon by whose far-flung light | |
| We seem to see the lingering anguish end, | |
| Scholar and jurist, need I speak the name | |
| That sheds on all of us its lustrous fame? | 30 |
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| How shall I praise him fitly, or begin?— | |
| Lauding endowments of th’ absorbing mind, | |
| Where all things ever known seem gathered in | |
| To grow into rich blessings for mankind, | |
| We but the medal’s silver side behold— | 35 |
| Though fair its sheen, the other side is gold. | |
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| For wedded to this rare mentality, | |
| There beats within his breast a Jewish heart, | |
| That pleads and throbs in ceaseless sympathy | |
| To right the wrong ’neath which his brethren smart, | 40 |
| The nameless wrong, to which he gave a name— | |
| To prove a Russian envoy’s lasting shame. | |
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| Small need, in truth, to bring in proud array | |
| The gracious giving of his bounteous thought. | |
| Wherever Jewish learning lights our way, | 45 |
| His hand has labored and his genius wrought. | |
| A man of men! ’Twill be our boast we knew | |
| And held in love, our country’s foremost Jew! | |
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