Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

By Edward Sydney Tybee

Lines to an Anti-Semite

STAND! as God saw thee of old time

We see and know thee now;

The brand of unforgotten crime

Still black upon thy brow,

That mark, Eternal Justice traced,

Thou coverest in vain;

Its blighting stigma uneffaced;

Where is thy brother, Cain?

Aye, hypocrite, and if thou wilt,

White hands, in protest, spread!

The blood by coarser murderers spilt

Was at thy bidding shed.

Thy speech inflamed each ignorant soul

With thine own maddening wine;

And when their fury burst control,

Their brutal acts were thine.

For thee the crowded Plaza seethed

Round Seville’s high-built pyre;

And shrinking forms of women wreathed

With boiling snakes of fire.

Thy servants fanned their ardent breath

Into a fiercer flame;

And watched, well-pleased, the dallying death,

That lingered ere it came.

But thou hast darker secrets yet,

And deeds more dear to hell.

The sightless, sounding oubliette

Hath kept thy counsel well,

The silent hours that crush the heart,

The soul-destroying gloom;

Thine, devil, was the fiendish art

Devised that living tomb.

Woe, woe on the unhappy state

That learns thy bloody creed,

And makes her mansion desolate

Thy cruel lust to feed.

Before one dread, impartial Bar

Her sons, shall find ere long,

How terrible the helpless are,

The feeble ones how strong!

Lo! where the dotard Empress, Spain,

With loosened necklace stands,

While those fair jewels, grain by grain,

Slip from her nerveless hands!

Unmoved she sees her pearls depart

And smiles with alien eyes;

For heavy on her palsied heart

The curse of Israel lies.

Foul shark, whose malice never sleeps,

On noblest victims fed;

What swimmer bold shall cleave the deeps

Thy rivings left so red;

And when thy bulk sways up to breathe

On that encrimsoned tide,

With one unerring home-thrust sheathe

His dagger in thy side?