So, unharmed and unafraid, Sat the swallow still and brooded, Through the walls a breach had made, Then the army, elsewhere bent, So it stood there all alone, Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, Which the cannon-shot had shattered. THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT. How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves, At rest in all this moving up and down! The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep The long mysterious Exodus of Death. And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown, The very names recorded here are strange, With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for He created Death;" The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that never more shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,- No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. How came they here? What burst of Christian hate, Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate- They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, All their lives long, with the unleavened bread The wasting famine of the heart they fed, "Anathema maranatha !" was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world, where'er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. For in the background figures vague and vast And thus for ever, with reverted look, The mystic volume of the world they read,— But ah! what once has been shall be no more. SANDALPHON. HAVE you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told, Of the limitless realms of the airHave you read it—the marvellous story. Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer? How, erect at the outermost gates With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night? The Angels of Wind and of Fire With the song's irresistible stress; But serene in the rapturous throng, |