“The Children of the Pale”

WHENCE comes this motley, dark-eyed, swarthy crowd,

Of alien children in a London street,

With laughter and with chatter shrill and loud,

And hurrying feet?

From that far land they come whose eagles look

O’er east and west. Their fathers crossed the waves

Because they would no longer tamely brook

The lot of slaves.

For generations in the gloom they dwelt

Dark as the sombre forests of the North,

Till suddenly within their hearts they felt

The call, “Come forth!”

The moss-grown walls of hoary synagogue

And school, the field of Death than Life more kind,

The jewelled tables of the Decalogue,

They left behind.

But in their hearts, as in the Holiest Place,

They bore the ark, its manna and its rod,

The lust of knowledge and the pride of race,

The awe of God.

And on their children’s faces I behold

Flashes and gleams, as from some inner shrine,

Recalling ancient stories proudly told

Of Israel’s line.