Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917.
By Joseph LeiserThe Sea of the Talmud
T
The milky way glows soft and white.
We’ve spread our sails to catch the breeze
That frets the vast rabbinic seas.
That profits neither gold nor gain,
Whose shores are stretched along a land,
Unmapped by man’s designing hand.
We start on our strange enterprise—
Set outward bound, where signals gleam
Beyond the shadows of our dream,
Have trodden on or ever can,
And port at quays no ship-bound crew
Has sighted in the cosmic blue.
Like distant morn or evening star,
And golden as the halls of Ind
Where hush the sobbings of the wind.
And sees the flood and ebbing tide
Run up and down a fabled shore
Outlined complete in cryptic lore.
And manned with brave and seasoned crew
We sail at ease this unplumbed sea
Of knowledge and of mystery.
Whose pennants fly the signal marks
Of playful whims that, fancy free,
Glide o’er this vast rabbinic sea.
We rock, as out we head again
Our graceful sloop—or east or west—
It matters not which way the quest.
The streams whose springs are poetry;
And rivulets from fancy’s height
Drop down to add their welcome mite.
The visions of the Anakim;
And animals as high as these
Play quoits with fishes in the seas.
Elijah on his daily round,
Who unafraid of good or ill,
Strives but to do another’s will.
Resplendent as the royal glass
The sages quaff, when at their feast,
The banquet hall lights up the east.
Of heaven bring their freighted sound
From halls where grey-haired sages sit
And questions of their Torah knit.
Where fretful white caps madly play;
Then midst the storm the seraphim
Becalm the waves by praising Him.
Bequeathed its sailors so much bliss,
For old as are its thundering shores,
Were ne’er bestrewn with spoils of wars.
Discharged its freight in watery graves;
For he who sails this unique sea
Returns with his own argosy.
This mystic sea is swathed in light,
And from its depths droll voices lure
The land beset forth on a tour.
Where men and women fret their days,
No cruise as this makes sport of time,
Or breed or border, land or clime.
In gathering darkness evening dips,
Yet happy is each crew, and free,
That sails this vast rabbinic sea.