100 Where, through iron grates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word

105

Preach of Christ arisen!

Not in vain, Confessor old,
Unto us the tale is told

Of thy day of trial;

Every age on him, who strays
From its broad and beaten ways,
Pours its sevenfold vial.

Happy he whose inward ear
110 Angel comfortings can hear,
O'er the rabble's laughter;
And while Hatred's fagots burn,
Glimpses through the smoke discern
Of the good hereafter.

115 Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set

120

In the world's wide fallow;
After hands shall sow the seed,
After hands from hill and mead
Reap the harvests yellow.

Thus, with somewhat of the Seer,

Must the moral pioneer

From the Future borrow;

Clothe the waste with dreams of grain,

And, on midnight's sky of rain,

Paint the golden morrow!

VI.

THE TWO RABBIS.

THE Rabbi Nathan, twoscore years and ten,
Walked blameless through the evil world, and

then,

Just as the almond blossomed in his hair, Met a temptation all too strong to bear, 5 And miserably sinned. So, adding not Falsehood to guilt, he left his seat, and taught No more among the elders, but went out From the great congregation girt about With sackcloth, and with ashes on his head, 10 Making his gray locks grayer. Long he prayed, Smiting his breast; then, as the Book he laid Open before him for the Bath-Col's choice, Pausing to hear that Daughter of a Voice, Behold the royal preacher's words: “A friend 15 Loveth at all times, yea, unto the end; And for the evil day thy brother lives." Marvelling, he said: "It is the Lord who gives Counsel in need. At Ecbatana dwells Rabbi Ben Isaac, who all men excels

20 In righteousness and wisdom, as the trees

Of Lebanon the small weeds that the bees

Bow with their weight. I will arise, and lay
My sins before him."

12. Daughter of the Voice is the meaning of Bath-Col, which was a sort of divination practised by the Jews when the gift of prophecy had died out. Something of the same sort of divination has been used amongst Christians when the Bible has been opened at hap-hazard and some answer expected to a question in the first passage that meets the eye.

And he went his way

Barefooted, fasting long, with many prayers; 25 But even as one who, followed unawares, Suddenly in the darkness feels a hand

Thrill with its touch his own, and his cheek fanned

By odors subtly sweet, and whispers near

Of words he loathes, yet cannot choose but hear, 30 So, while the Rabbi journeyed, chanting low The wail of David's penitential woe,

Before him still the old temptation came,

And mocked him with the motion and the shame Of such desires that, shuddering, he abhorred 35 Himself; and, crying mightily to the Lord To free his soul and cast the demon out, Smote with his staff the blankness round about.

At length, in the low light of a spent day,
The towers of Ecbatana far away

40 Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint
And footsore, pausing where for some dead saint
The faith of Islam reared a doméd tomb,
Saw some one kneeling in the shadow, whom
He greeted kindly: "May the Holy One
45 Answer thy prayers, O stranger!" Whereupon
The shape stood up with a loud cry, and then,
Clasped in each other's arms, the two gray men
Wept, praising Him whose gracious providence
Made their paths one. But straightway, as the

sense

50 Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore
Himself away: "O friend beloved, no more
Worthy am I to touch thee, for I came,
Foul from my sins, to tell thee all my shame.
Haply thy prayers, since nought availeth mine,

55 May purge my soul, and make it white like thine. Pity me, O Ben Isaac, I have sinned!"

Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind

Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare
The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.

60 I too, O friend, if not in act," he said,

"In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not
read,

'Better the eye should see than that desire
Should wander'? Burning with a hidden fire
That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee

65 For pity and for help, as thou to me.

Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried,
Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!'

Side by side

In the low sunshine by the turban stone

They knelt; each made his brother's woe his own,

70 Forgetting, in the agony and stress

Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness; Peace, for his friend besought, his own became; His prayers were answered in another's name; And, when at last they rose up to embrace, 75 Each saw God's pardon in his brother's face!

Long after, when his headstone gathered moss,
Traced on the targum-marge of Onkelos
In Rabbi Nathan's hand these words we read :

Hope not the cure of sin till Self is dead;

59. Which he wore as a mortification of the flesh.

77. The targum was a paraphrase of some portion of Scriptare in the Chaidee language. It was on the margin of the most ancient targum that of Onkelos-that Rabbi Nathan wrote his words.

80 Forget it in love's service, and the debt
Thou canst not pay the angels shall forget;
Heaven's gate is shut to him who comes alone ;
Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy own!

VII.

THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS.

TRITEMIUS OF HERBIPOLIS, one day,
While kneeling at the altar's foot to pray,
Alone with God, as was his pious choice,
Heard from without a miserable voice,
5 A sound which seemed of all sad things to tell,
As of a lost soul crying out of hell.

Thereat the Abbot paused: the chain whereby
His thoughts went upward broken by that cry;
And, looking from the casement, saw below
to A wretched woman, with gray hair a-flow,

And withered hands held up to him, who cried
For alms as one who might not be denied.

She cried, "For the dear love of Him who gave His life for ours, my child from bondage save, 15 My beautiful, brave first-born, chained with slaves In the Moor's galley, where the sun-smit waves Lap the white walls of Tunis!"-"What I can I give," Tritemius said: "my prayers.”

20

man

66

Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold "Mock me not thus; I ask not prayers, but gold.