The Jews’ Cemetery on the Lido

A TRACT of land swept by the salt seafoam,

Fringed with acacia flowers and billowy deep,

In meadow-grasses, where tall poppies sleep,

And bees athirst for wilding honey roam,

How many a bleeding heart hath found its home,

Under these hillocks which the seamews sweep!

Here knelt an outcast race to curse and weep,

Age after age, ’neath heaven’s unanswering dome.

Sad is the place and solemn. Grave by grave,

Lost in the dunes, with rank weeds overgrown,

Pines in abandonment; as though unknown,

Uncared for, lay the dead, whose records pave

This path neglected; each forgotten stone

Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave.