tage of poison; birds sang amid its foliage and a serpent was
coiled about its stem.

10. Under its branches a turbaned mighty-limbed Prophet brandished
a drawn sword.

11. And behold, this tree likewise puts forth perfidious arms to
strangle the Sower; but cunningly he disentangles the murderous
knot and passes on.

12. Lo, his hands are not empty of grain, the strength of his arm
is not spent.

13. What germ hast thou saved for the future, O miraculous
Husbandman? Tell me, thou Planter of Christhood and Islam;
tell me, thou seed-bearing Israel!

IV. THE TEST.

1. Daylong I brooded upon the Passion of Israel.

2. I saw him bound to the wheel, nailed to the cross, cut off by
the sword, burned at the stake, tossed into the seas.

3. And always the patient, resolute, martyr face arose in silent
rebuke and defiance.

4. A Prophet with four eyes; wide gazed the orbs of the spirit
above the sleeping eyelids of the senses.

5. A Poet, who plucked from his bosom the quivering heart and
fashioned it into a lyre.

6. A placid-browed Sage, uplifted from earth in celestial
meditation.

7. These I saw, with princes and people in their train; the
monumental dead and the standard-bearers of the future.

8. And suddenly I heard a burst of mocking laughter, and turning, I
beheld the shuffling gait, the ignominious features, the sordid mask
of the son of the Ghetto.

V. CURRENTS.

1. Vast oceanic movements, the flux and reflux of immeasurable
tides, oversweep our continent.

2. From the far Caucasian steppes, from the squalid Ghettos of
Europe,

3. From Odessa and Bucharest, from Kief, and Ekaterinoslav,

4. Hark to the cry of the exiles of Babylon, the voice of Rachel
mourning for her children, of Israel lamenting for Zion.

5. And lo, like a turbid stream, the long-pent flood bursts the
dykes of oppression and rushes hitherward.

6. Unto her ample breast, the generous mother of nations welcomes
them.

7. The herdsman of Canaan and the seed of Jerusalem's royal
shepherd renew their youth amid the pastoral plains of Texas
and the golden valleys of the Sierras.

VI. THE PROPHET.

1. Moses Ben Maimon lifting his perpetual lamp over the pa