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So, unharmed and unafraid,

Sat the swallow still and brooded,
Till the constant cannonade

Through the walls a breach had made,
And the siege was thus concluded.

Then the army, elsewhere bent,
Struck its tents as if disbanding,
Only not the Emperor's tent,
For he ordered, ere he went,
Very curtly, "Leave it standing!"

So it stood there all alone,

Loosely flapping, torn and tattered,
Till the brood was fledged and flown,
Singing o'er those walls of stone

Which the cannon-shot had shattered.

THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT.

How strange it seems!

These Hebrews in their

graves,

Close by the street of this fair seaport town, Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down!

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep

The long mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,
Of foreign accent, and of different climes;
Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Blessed be God! for He created Death;"

The mourners said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith,

"And giveth Life that never more shall cease."

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,-
No Psalms of David now the silence break,-
No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue
In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,

And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate-
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish, and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears.

"Anathema maranatha !"

was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street ; At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world, where'er they

went;

Trampled and beaten were they as the sand,

And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus for ever, with reverted look,

The mystic volume of the world they read,—
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more.
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.

SANDALPHON.

HAVE you read in the Talmud of old, In the Legends the Rabbins have told, Of the limitless realms of the airHave you read it—the marvellous story. Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory, Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?

How, erect at the outermost gates
Of the City Celestial he waits,

With his feet on the ladder of light, That, crowded with angels unnumbered, By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered Alone in the desert at night?

The Angels of Wind and of Fire
Chant only one hymn, and expire

With the song's irresistible stress;
Expire in their rapture and wonder,
As harp-strings are broken asunder
By music they throb to express.

But serene in the rapturous throng,
Unmoved by the rush of the song,

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