100 Where, through iron grates, he heard Poor disciples of the Word 105 Preach of Christ arisen! Not in vain, Confessor old, Of thy day of trial; Every age on him, who strays Happy he whose inward ear 115 Knowing this, that never yet Share of Truth was vainly set 120 In the world's wide fallow; 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, 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 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, 40 Rose on the desert's rim; and Nathan, faint sense 50 Of his transgression smote him, Nathan tore 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 60 I too, O friend, if not in act," he said, "In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou not 'Better the eye should see than that desire 65 For pity and for help, as thou to me. Pray for me, O my friend!" But Nathan cried, 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, 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 VII. THE GIFT OF TRITEMIUS. TRITEMIUS OF HERBIPOLIS, one day, Thereat the Abbot paused: the chain whereby And withered hands held up to him, who cried 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. |