Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917.
By From the Hebrew of Harry Wolfsohn (Trans. H. B. Ehrmann)The Spirit of Hebraism
T
That my body of soul is bereft;
And that barren ’midst strangers I wander
And that no inspiration is left
But my vanishing fires ancestral
Where the last faint flashes are seen,
And that like to the poor and the stranger,
What is left by the world I glean.
Like an ember that never grows cold,
Tho’ smouldering in its own ashes
Yet murmurs and grows as of old.
Oh, my Spirit awaits but my seeking
To burst like a spring from the soil,
And if once it be free from confinement
It will vest in all fruit of my toil.
And survive in the hewn marble plan,
And in song and in music and story
To the last generation of man.
It will speak from the lips of new Prophets,
And their truth from the heights will be hurled,
From a model city of Justice
Where its flag will blazon unfurled.