Frail as summer's flower we flourish; Praise the High Eternal One. 86 HENRY FRANCIS LYTE PSALM CXIV When the seed of Jacob fled From the cruel Pharaoh's land, Judah was in safety led By the Lord, whose powerful hand This the sea saw, and dismayed Flies; swift Jordan backward makes; What, O Sea, hath thee dismayed? Skipped ye? wherefore did ye shake, Tremble, O thou steadfast Earth, ADAPTED FROM THOMAS CAREW 87 PSALM CXXII I rejoiced when they said, Let us go to God's house And within its loved gates once again set our feet. O Jerusalem, built as a city compact, Where the tribes of the Lord did in olden times meet, To give thanks to His name, ever blest, on each feast, When Salem stood proudly, the Queen of the East. Though Salem no more in her grandeur exists, We revere her old walls, we pray for her peace; Let her lessons go forth, as the word of the Lord, That friendship and brotherhood here may in crease; That the house of the Lord may unite us in love, And gain us the peace of the temple above. RABBI HENRY S. JACOBS 88 PSALM CXXXVII We sat us down and wept, Where Babel's waters slept, And we thought of home and Zion as a long-gone happy dream; We hung our harps in air, On the willow-boughs, which there, Gloomy as round a sepulchre, were drooping o'er the stream. The foes, whose chains we wore, Were with us on that shore, Exulting in our tears that told the bitterness of woe. 66 Sing us," they cried aloud, "Ye, once so high and proud, The songs ye sang in Zion ere we laid her glory low." And shall the harp of heaven To Judah's monarch given, Be touched by captive fingers, or grace a fettered hand? No! sooner be my tongue Mute, powerless, and unstrung, Than its words of holy music make glad a stranger land. May this right hand, whose skill Can wake the harp at will, And bid the listeners' joys or griefs in light or dark ness come, Forget its godlike power, If for one brief, dark hour, My heart forgets Jerusalem, fallen city of my home. Daughter of Babylon! Blessed be that chosen one, Whom God shall send to smite thee, when there is none to save; He from the mother's breast And lay it in the sleep of death beside its father's grave! 89 FITZ-GREENE HALLECK FROM PSALM CXXXIX Where from Thy presence shall I flee? Behold! in all Thy power and might Thou, Lord, shalt pierce the veil of night. If on the radiant wings of morn Darkness and night shall shroud my way, Thou knowest well each infant thought, Man's subtlest thoughts are known to Thee Within the sun's enlivening rays, To the broad ocean waves which rise In heaving billows to the skies, Or great or small, each work of Thine, Each breeze which fans the twilight hour, MARGARET M. DAVIDSON |