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Home  »  The Standard Book of Jewish Verse  »  The Harp of Zion

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

By James Willis

The Harp of Zion

THE HARP of Zion sleepeth

In the shadow of the hill;

The child of promise weepeth

His weary exile still;

The ages of his sorrow

Flow on like Jordan’s stream;

He looketh for the morrow,

But cannot see its beam.

No beam of heaven discloseth

His father’s land of birth;

His footstep ne’er reposeth

In the nations of the earth;

To them he blindly holdeth

The lamp he cannot see;

While darkness deep enfoldeth

The homes of Galilee!

Yet not, O God, for ever

Thou’lt judge him in thy wrath;

But bid the darkness sever

Above his destined path;

In thy dread book is written

The period of his doom;

And the vale thy curse has smitten,

As a garden yet shall bloom.

Even now the destined ages

Are closing o’er the land;

And every sign presages

The morn again at hand;

The darkness swiftly weareth,

Light trembles from the shore;

Each wind of heaven prepareth

The wanderer to restore!