The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Vol.II, Jewish Poems: Translations

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Already, in 1879, the storm was gathering. In a distant province
of Russia at first, then on the banks of the Volga, and finally in
Moscow itself, the old cry was raised, the hideous mediaeval charge
revived, and the standard of persecution unfurled against the Jews.
Province after province took it up. In Bulgaria, Servia, and, above
all, Roumania, where, we were told, the sword of the Czar had been
drawn to protect the oppressed, Christian atrocities took the place
of Moslem atrocities, and history turned a page backward into the dark
annals of violence and crime. And not alone in despotic Russia, but
in Germany, the seat of modern philosophic thought and culture, the
rage of Anti-Semitism broke out and spread with fatal ease and potency.
In Berlin itself tumults and riots were threatened. We in America
could scarcely comprehend the situation or credit the reports, and
for a while we shut our eyes and ears to the facts; but we were soon
rudely awakened from our insensibility, and forced to face the truth.
It was in England that the voice was first raised in behalf of
justice and humanity. In January, 1881, there appeared in the
"London Times" a series of articles, carefully compiled on the
testimony of eye-witnesses, and confirmed by official documents,
records, etc., giving an account of events that had been taking place
in southern and western Russia during a period of nine months,
between April and December of 1880. We do not need to recall the
sickening details. The headings will suffice: outrage, murder, arson,
and pillage, and the result,--100,000 Jewish families made homeless
and destitute, and nearly $100,000,000 worth of property destroyed.
Nor need we recall the generous outburst of sympathy and indignation
from America. "It is not that it is the oppression of Jews by
Russia," said Mr. Evarts in the meeting at Chickering Hall Wednesday
evening, February 4; "it is that it is the oppression of men and
women, and we are men and women." So spoke civilized Christendom,
and for Judaism,-- who can describe that thrill of brotherhood,
quickened anew, the immortal pledge of the race, made one again
through sorrow? For Emma Lazarus it was a trumpet call that awoke
slumbering and unguessed echoes. All this time she had been seeking
heroic ideals in alien stock, soulless and far removed; in pagan
mythology and mystic, mediaeval Christianity, ignoring her very
birthright,--the majestic vista of the past, down which, "high above
flood and fire," had been conveyed the precious scroll of the Moral
Law. Hitherto Judaism had been a dead letter to her. Of Portuguese
descent, her family had always been members of the oldest and most
orthodox congregation of New York, where strict adherence to custom
and ceremonial was the watchword of faith; but it was only during
her childhood and earliest years that she attended the synagogue,
and conformed to the prescribed rites and usages which she had now
long since abandoned as obsolete and having no bearing on modern
life. Nor had she any great enthusiasm for her own people. As late
as April, 1882, she published in "The Century Magazine" an article
written probably some months before, entitled "Was the Earl of
Beaconsfield a Representative Jew?" in which she is disposed to
accept as the type of the modern Jew the brilliant, successful, but
not over-scrupulous chevalier d'industrie. In view of subsequent,
or rather contemporaneous events, the closing paragraph of the article
in question is worthy of being cited:--

"Thus far their religion [the Jewish], whose mere preservation
under such adverse conditions seems little short of a miracle,
has been deprived of the natural means of development and
progress, and has remained a stationary force. The next
hundred years will, in our opinion be the test of their
vitality as a people; the phase of toleration upon which
they are only now entering will prove whether or not they
are capable of growth."

By a curious, almost fateful juxtaposition, in the same number of
the magazine appeared Madame Ragozin's defense of Russian barbarity,
and in the following (May) number Emma Lazarus's impassioned appeal
and reply, "Russian Christianity versus Modern Judaism." From
this time dated the crusade that she undertook in behalf of her race,
and the consequent expansion of all her faculties, the growth of
spiritual power which always ensues when a great cause is espoused
and a strong conviction enters the soul. Her verse rang out as it
had never rung before,--a clarion note, calling a people to heroic
action and unity, to the consciousness and fulfillment of a grand
destiny. When has Judaism been so stirred as by "The Crowing of
the Red Cock" and

THE BANNER OF THE JEW.

Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day
The glorious Maccabean rage,
The sire heroic, hoary-gray,
His five-fold lion-lineage;
The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God,
The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod.

From Mizpeh's mountain ridge they saw
Jerusalem's empty streets; her shrine
Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law
With idol and with pagan sign.
Mourners in tattered black were there
With ashes sprinkled on their hair.

Then from the stony peak there rang
A blast to ope the graves; down poured
The Maccabean clan, who sang
Their battle anthem to the Lord.
Five heroes lead, and following, see
Ten thousand rush to victory!

Oh for Jerusalem's trumpet now,
To blow a blast of shattering power,
To wake the sleeper high and low,
And rouse them to the urgent hour!
No hand for vengeance, but to save,
A million naked swords should wave.

Oh, deem not dead that martial fire,
Say not the mystic flame is spent!
With Moses' law and David's lyre,
Your ancient strength remains unbent.
Let but an Ezra rise anew,
To lift the BANNER OF THE JEW!

A rag, a mock at first,--erelong
When men have bled and women wept,
To guard its precious folds from wrong,
Even they who shrunk, even they who slept,
Shall leap to bless it and to save.
Strike! for the brave revere the brave!

The dead forms burst their bonds and lived again. She sings "Rosh
Hashanah" (the Jewish New Year) and "Hanuckah (the Feast of Lights):--

"Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
Ablaze on Evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
An eight-fold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart take fire,
The Maccabean spirit leap new-born."

And "The New Ezekiel:"--

"What! can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again:
Say to the wind, come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live, upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word.
Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land."

Her whole being renewed and refreshed itself at its very source. She
threw herself into the study of her race, its language, literature,
and history.

Breaking the outward crust, she pierced to the heart of the faith
and "the miracle" of its survival. What was it other than the ever-
present, ever-vivifying spirit itself, which cannot die,--the
religious and ethical zeal which fires the whole history of the
people, and of which she herself felt the living glow within her own
soul? She had come upon the secret and the genius of Judaism,--that
absolute interpenetration and transfusion of spirit with body and
substance which, taken literally, often reduces itself to a question
of food and drink, a dietary regulation, and again, in proper
splendor,
incarnates itself and shines out before humanity in the prophets,
teachers, and saviors of mankind.

Those were busy, fruitful years for Emma Lazarus, who worked, not
with the pen alone, but in the field of practical and beneficent
activity. For there was an immense task to accomplish. The tide of
immigration had set in, and ship after ship came laden with hunted
human beings flying from their fellow-men, while all the time, like
a tocsin, rang the terrible story of cruelty and persecution,--horrors
that the pen refuses to dwell upon. By the hundreds and thousands
they flocked upon our shores,--helpless, innocent victims of injustice
and oppression, panic-stricken in the midst of strange and utterly
new surroundings.

Emma Lazarus came into personal contact with these people, and
visited them in their refuge on Ward Island. While under the
influence of all the emotions aroused by this great crisis in the
history of her race, she wrote the "Dance of Death," a drama of
persecution of the twelfth century, founded upon the authentic
records,--unquestionably her finest work in grasp and scope, and,
above all, in moral elevation and purport. The scene is laid in
Nordhausen, a free city in Thuringia, where the Jews, living, as the
deemed, in absolute security and peace, were caught up in the wave of
persecution that swept over Europe at that time. Accused of poisoning
the wells and causing the pestilence, or black death, as it was called,
they were condemned to be burned.

We do not here intend to enter upon a critical or literary analysis
of the play, or to point out dramatic merits or defects, but we
should like to make its readers feel with us the holy ardor and
impulse of the writer and the spiritual import of the work. The
action is without surprise, the doom fixed from the first; but so
glowing is the canvas with local and historic color, so vital and
intense the movement, so resistless, the "internal evidence," if we
may call it thus, penetrating its very substance and form, that we are
swept along as by a wave of human sympathy and grief. In contrast
with "The Spagnoletto," how large is the theme and how all-embracing
the catastrophe! In place of the personal we have the drama of
the universal. Love is only a flash now,--a dream caught sight of
and at once renounced at a higher claim.

"Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid?
Why should you tremble?
Prince, I am afraid!
Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy,
A blasphemy against my father's grief,
My people's agony!

"What good shall come, forswearing kith and God,
To follow the allurements of the heart?"

asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for he princely
wooer and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast.

"O God!
How shall I pray for strength to love him less
Than mine own soul!
No more of that,
I am all Israel's now. Till this cloud pass,
I have no thought, no passion, no desire,
Save for my people."

Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,--fortitude and courage,
and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are
worth living and dying for.

The Jews pass by in procession--men, women, and children--on their
way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array,
carrying
the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the perpetual lamp
and the seven branched silver candle-stick of the synagogue. The
crowd hoot and jeer at them.

"The misers! they will take their gems and gold
Down to the grave!"

"Let us rejoice"

sing the Jewish youths in chorus; and the maidens:--

"Our feet stand within thy gates, O Zion!
Within thy portals, O Jerusalem!"

The flames rise and dart among them; their garments wave, their jewels
flash, as they dance and sing in the crimson blaze. The music ceases,
a sound of crashing boards is heard and a great cry,--"Hallelujah!"
What a glory and consecration of the martyrdom! Where shall we find a
more triumphant vindication and supreme victory of spirit over matter?

"I see, I see,
How Israel's ever-crescent glory makes
These flames that would eclipse it dark as blots
Of candle-light against the blazing sun.
We die a thousand deaths,--drown, bleed, and burn.
Our ashes are dispersed unto the winds.
Yet the wild winds cherish the sacred seed,
The fire refuseth to consume.

. . . . . . . . .

Even as we die in honor, from our death
Shall bloom a myriad heroic lives,
Brave through our bright example, virtuous
Lest our great memory fall in disrepute."

The "Dance to Death" was published, along with other poems and
translations from the Hebrew poets of mediaeval Spain, in a small
column entitled "Songs of a Semite." The tragedy was dedicated, "In
profound veneration and respect to the memory of George Eliot, the
illustrious writer who did most among the artists of our day towards
elevating and ennobling the spirit of Jewish nationality."

For this was the idea that had caught the imagination of Emma Lazarus,
--a restored and independent nationality and repatriation in Palestine.
In her article in "The Century" of February, 1883, on the "Jewish
Problem," she says:--

"I am fully persuaded that all suggested solutions other
than this are but temporary palliatives. . . . The idea
formulated by George Eliot has already sunk into the minds
of many Jewish enthusiasts, and it germinates with miraculous
rapidity. 'The idea that I am possessed with,' says Deronda,
'is that of restoring a political existence to my people;
making them a nation again, giving them a national centre,
such as the English have, though they, too, are scattered
over the face of the globe. That task which presents itself
to me as a duty. . . . I am resolved to devote my life to
it. AT THE LEAST, I MAY AWAKEN A MOVEMENT IN OTHER MINDS
SUCH HAS BEEN AWAKENED IN MY OWN.' Could the noble
prophetess who wrote the above words have lived but till to-
day to see the ever-increasing necessity of adopting her
inspired counsel, . . .she would have been herself astonished
at the flame enkindled by her seed of fire, and the practical
shape which the movement projected by her poetic vision is
beginning to assume."

In November of 1882 appeared her first "Epistle to the Hebrews,"--
one of a series of articles written for the "American Hebrew,"
published weekly through several months. Addressing herself now
to a Jewish audience, she sets forth without reserve her views and
hopes for Judaism, now passionately holding up the mirror for the
shortcomings and peculiarities of her race. She says:--

"Every student of the Hebrew language is aware that we have
in the conjugation of our verbs a mode known as the 'intensive
voice,' which, by means of an almost imperceptible modification
of vowel-points, intensifies the meaning of the primitive root.
A similar significance seems to attach to the Jews themselves
in connection with the people among whom they dwell. They are
the 'intensive form' of any nationality whose language and
customs they adopt. . . . Influenced by the same causes, they
represent the same results; but the deeper lights and shadows
of the Oriental temperament throw their failings, as well as
their virtues, into more prominent relief."

In drawing the epistles to a close, February 24, 1883, she thus
summarizes the special objects she has had in view:--

"My chief aim has been to contribute my mite towards arousing
that spirit of Jewish enthusiasm which might manifest itself:
First, in a return to varied pursuits and broad system of
physical and intellectual education adopted by our ancestors;
Second, in a more fraternal and practical movement towards
alleviating the sufferings of oppressed Jews in countries less
favored than our own; Third, in a closer and wider study of
Hebrew literature and history and finally, in a truer recognition
of the large principals of religion, liberty, and law upon
which Judaism is founded, and which should draw into harmonious
unity Jews of every shade of opinion."

Her interest in Jewish affairs was at its height when she planned a
visit abroad, which had been a long-cherished dream, and May 15, 1883,
she sailed for England, accompanied by a younger sister. We have
difficulty in recognizing the tragic priestess we have been portraying
in the enthusiastic child of travel who seems new-born into a new
world. From the very outset she is in a maze of wonder and delight.
At sea she writes:--

"Our last day on board ship was a vision of beauty from
morning till night,--the sea like a mirror and the sky
dazzling with light. In the afternoon we passed a ship
in full sail, near enough to exchange salutes and cheers.
After tossing about for six days without seeing a human
being, except those on our vessel, even this was a sensation.
Then an hour or two before sunset came the great sensation
of--land! At first, nothing but a shadow on the far horizon,
like the ghost of a ship; two or three widely scattered rocks
which were the promontories of Ireland, and sooner than we
expected we were steaming along low-lying purple hills."

The journey to Chester gives her "the first glimpse of mellow
England,"--a surprise which is yet no surprise, so well known and
familiar does it appear. Then Chester, with its quaint, picturesque
streets, "like the scene of a Walter Scott novel, the cathedral
planted in greenness, and the clear, gray river where a boatful of
scarlet dragoons goes gliding by." Everything is a picture for her
special benefit. She "drinks in, at every sense, the sights, sounds,
and smells, and the unimaginable beauty of it all." Then the
bewilderment of London, and a whirl of people, sights, and
impressions.
She was received with great distinction by the Jews, and many of the
leading men among them warmly advocated her views. But it was not
alone from her own people that she met with exceptional consideration.
She had the privilege of seeing many of the most eminent personages
of the day, all of whom honored her with special and personal regard.
There was, no doubt, something that strongly attracted people to her
at this time,--the force of her intellect at once made itself felt,
while at the same time the unaltered simplicity and modesty of her
character, and her readiness and freshness of enthusiasm, kept her
still almost like a child.

She makes a flying visit to Paris, where she happens to be on the 14th
of July, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastile, and of the
beginning of the republic; she drives to Versailles, "that gorgeous
shell of royalty, where the crowd who celebrate the birth of the
republic wander freely through the halls and avenues, and into the
most sacred rooms of the king. . . . There are ruins on every side in
Paris," she says; "ruins of the Commune, or the Siege, or the
Revolution; it is terrible--it seems as if the city were seared with
fire and blood."

Such was Paris to her then, and she hastens back to her beloved London,
starting from there on the tour through England that has been mapped
out for her. "A Day in Surrey with William Morris," published in
"The Century Magazine," describes her visit to Merton Abbey, the
old Norman monastery, converted into a model factory by the poet-
humanitarian, who himself received her as his guest, conducted her
all over the picturesque building and garden, and explained to her
his views of art and his aims for the people.

She drives through Kent, "where the fields, valleys, and slopes are
garlanded with hops and ablaze with scarlet poppies." Then Canterbury,
Windsor, and Oxford, Stratford, Warwick, the valley of the Wye, Wells,
Exeter, and Salisbury,--cathedral after cathedral. Back to London,
and then north through York, Durham, and Edinburgh, and on the 15th
of September she sails for home. We have merely named the names,
for it is impossible to convey an idea of the delight and importance
of this trip, "a crescendo of enjoyment," as she herself calls it.
Long after, in strange, dark hours of suffering, these pictures of
travel arose before her, vivid and tragic even in their hold and
spell upon her.

The winter of 1883-84 was not especially productive. She wrote a
few reminiscences of her journey and occasional poems on the Jewish
themes, which appeared in the "American Hebrew;" but for the most
part gave herself up to quiet retrospect and enjoyment with her
friends of the life she had had a glimpse of, and the experience she
had stored,--a restful, happy period. In August of the same year
she was stricken with a severe and dangerous malady, from which she
slowly recovered, only to go through a terrible ordeal and affliction.
Her father's health, which had long been failing, now broke down
completely, and the whole winter was one long strain of acute anxiety,
which culminated in his death, in March, 1885. The blow was a
crushing one for Emma. Truly, the silver cord was loosed, and the
golden bowl broken. Life lost its meaning and charm. Her father's
sympathy and pride in her work had been her chief incentive and
ambition, and had spurred her on when her own confidence and spirit
failed. Never afterwards did she find complete and spontaneous
expression. She decided to go abroad as the best means of regaining
composure and strength and sailed once more in May for England,
where she was welcomed now by the friends she had made, almost as
to another home. She spent the summer very quietly at Richmond, an
ideally beautiful spot in Yorkshire, where she soon felt the
beneficial influence of her peaceful surroundings. "The very air
seems to rest one here," she writes; and inspired by the romantic
loveliness of the place, she even composed the first few chapters
of a novel, begun with a good deal of dash and vigor, but soon
abandoned, for she was still struggling with depression and gloom.

"I have neither ability, energy, nor purpose," she writes. "It is
impossible to do anything, so I am forced to set it aside for the
present; whether to take it up again or not in the future remains
to be seen."

In the autumn she goes on the Continent, visiting the Hague, which
"completely fascinates" her, and where she feels "stronger and more
cheerful" than she has "for many a day." Then Paris, which this time
amazes her "with its splendor and magnificence. All the ghosts of
the Revolution are somehow laid," she writes, and she spends six
weeks here enjoying to the full the gorgeous autumn weather, the
sights, the picture galleries, the bookshops, the whole brilliant
panorama of the life; and early in December she starts for Italy.

And now once more we come upon that keen zest of enjoyment, that
pure desire and delight of the eyes, which are the prerogative of
the poet,--Emma Lazarus was a poet. The beauty of the world,--what
a rapture and intoxication it is, and how it bursts upon her in the
very land of beauty, "where Dante and Petrarch trod!" A magic glow
colours it all; no mere blues and greens anymore, but a splendor of
purple and scarlet and emerald; "each tower, castle, and village
shining like a jewel; the olive, the fig, and at your feet the roses,
growing in mid-December." A day in Pisa seems like a week, so crowded
is it with sensations and unforgettable pictures. Then a month in
Florence, which is still more entrancing with its inexhaustible
treasures of beauty and art; and finally Rome, the climax of it all,--

"wiping out all other places and impressions, and opening
a whole new world of sensations. I am wild with the
excitement of this tremendous place. I have been here a
week, and have seen the Vatican and the Capitoline Museums,
and the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's, besides the ruins
on the streets and on the hills, and the graves of Shelley
and Keats.

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