The New Jewish Hospital at Hamburg

A HOSPITAL for the poor and weary Jew,

For sons of man that suffer three-fold ills;

Burdened and baned with three infirmities;

With poverty, disease, and Judaism!

The worst of all has ever been the last,

The Jewish sickness of the centuries,

The plague caught in the Nile stream’s slimy vale,

The old unwholesome faith that Egypt knew.

No healing for this sickness! All in vain

The vapor-bath and douch, vain all the tricks

Of surgery, vain all this house may bring

Of simples to its fever-tossing guests.

Will Time perchance, the eternal goddess, blot

This gloomy sorrow that handed down

From sire to son—will some far children know

The perfect happiness of cloudless health?

None can foretell! Yet meantime let us praise

The heart that full of love and wisdom sought

To trickle balm upon the rankling wound,

To give what comfort still is possible.

This loving man has built a shelter here

For suffering that a skillful hand may soothe

Or cure, or haply Death’s if others fail.

Beds sets he here and cooling drinks and care.

A man of deeds, he did what one might do

And in the evening of his days he paid

Unto good works the needful due, and dreamed

To rest from labor in kind charity.

Unstinted was his hand—yet richer gifts

Rolled down his cheeks so many a time—the tears,

The precious, generous tears that oft he wept

For his poor brethren’s immedicable ill.