The Chosen Ones of Israel

THE CHOSEN ones of Israel are scatter’d far and wide;

Where flows the lordly Tiber, where rolls the Atlantic tide—

By Danube’s winding waters, by Hudson’s crystal springs,

Dwell the myriad descendants of the Prophets and the Kings,

Abroad along the valleys are their habitations found—

They are hunters in the forest, and tillers of the ground—

The rising sun beholds them in torrid realms afar

And on their broken legions looks down the northern star.

In the old world’s crowded cities, in the prairies of the new,

Unchanged amid all changes, to their faith forever true—

Alike by Niger’s fountains and by Niagara’s flood

Still flow, unmix’d, the currents of the grand, heroic blood.

Ye mourn your lasting exile, your temple strewn in dust,

Yet forget not ye the promise of the righteous and the just—

Ye know ye shall be gathered, from every clime and shore,

And be again the chosen of Jehovah evermore,

From Assyria, Egypt, Elam—from Patmos, Cush, Shinar—

From Hamath, and the islands of foreign seats afar—

From all the earth’s four corners, where Israel’s children roam,

Shall the dispers’d of Judah throng to their long promis’d home,

And again like some high mountain whose tops are crown’d with snow,

Shall the Temple’s thousand turrets in the golden sunset glow—

And again before their altars shall the congregations stand,

On thy plains, O lov’d Jerusalem! the happy, holy land!

And it shall come to pass that the remnant in that day,

Upon the Lord of Hosts above, the great I Am, shall stay;

And the escap’d of Jacob, from the paths which they have trod,

Shall return to Him that smote them—your fathers’ mighty God!