me vigorous Jewish thinking._--_From a Menorah
Address by Dr. J. L. Magnes._

Menorah

By WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD

[Illustration: _WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD (born in New Jersey in 1876),
Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, is the
author of several volumes of verse and literary criticism which have
won high praise,--notably "Sonnets and Poems," "Byron and Byronism in
America," and "The Vaunt of Man."_]

WE'VE read in legends of the books of old
How deft Bezalel, wisest in his trade,
At the command of veiled Moses made
The seven-branched candlestick of beaten gold--
The base, the shaft, the cups, the knops, the flowers,
Like almond blossoms--and the lamps were seven.

We know at least that on the templed rock
Of Zion hill, with earth's revolving hours
Under the changing centuries of heaven,
It stood upon the solemn altar block,
By every Gentile who had heard abhorred--
The holy light of Israel of the Lord;
Until that Titus and the legions came
And battered the walls with catapult and fire,
And bore the priests and candlestick away,
And, as memorial of fulfilled desire,
Bade carve upon the arch that bears his name
The stone procession ye may see today
Beyond the Forum on the Sacred Way,
Lifting the golden candlestick of fame.

The city fell, the temple was a heap;
And little children, who had else grown strong
And in their manhood venged the Roman wrong,
Strewed step and chamber, in eternal sleep.
But the great vision of the sevenfold flames
Outlasted the cups wherein at first it sprung.
The Greeks might teach the arts, the Romans law;
The heathen hordes might shout for bread and games;
Still Israel, exalted in the realms of awe,
Guarded the Light in many an alien air,
Along the borders of the midland sea
In hostile cities, spending praise and prayer
And pondering on the larger things to be--
Down through the ages when the Cross uprose
Among the northern Gentiles to oppose:
Then huddled in the ghettos, barred at night,
In lands of unknown trees and fiercer snows,
They watched forevermore the Light, the Light.

The main seas opened to the west. The Nations