I would leave a gift here If I might: not Ï! — Like a homeless laughter, Vagrant wind gone by.

But while I am a glow-worm
I will shine and stay:
When I am a shadow . . .
I will creep away.

CARAVANS

WHAT bring ye me, O camels, across the southern desert,

The wan and parching desert, pale beneath the dusk ?

Ye great slow-moving ones, faithful as care is faithful,

Uncouth as dreams may be, sluggish as far-off ships,

What bring ye me, O camels?

"We bring thee gold like sunshine, saving that it warms not;

And rarest purple bring we, as dark as all the garnered

Bloom of many grape-vines; and spices subtly mingled

For a lasting savor: the precious nard and aloes;

The bitter-sweet of myrrh, like a sorrow having wings;

Ghostly breath of lilies bruised - how white they were !

And the captive life of many a far rosegarden.

Jewels bring we hither, surely stars once fallen,

Torn again from darkness: the sunlit frost of topaz,

Moon-fire pent in opals, pearls that even the sea loves.

Webs of marvel bring we, broideries that have drunken

Deep of all life-color from a thousand lives,

Each the royal cere-cloth of a century. We come! What wouldst thou more ?"

FROM THE DAY OF ATONEMENT

Lo! above the mournful chanting, Rise the fuller-sounded wailings Of the soul's most solemn anthem. Hark! the strains of deep Kol Nidra · Saddest music ever mortal Taught his lips to hymn or sound!

Not the heart of one lone mortal Told his anguish in that strain; All the sorrow, pain, and struggles Of a people in despair, Gathered from the vale of weeping, Through the ages of distress. 'Tis a mighty cry of beings Held in bondage and affliction; All the wailing and lamenting Of a homeless people, roaming O'er the plains and scattered hamlets Of a world without a refuge, All the sorrows, trials, bereavements, Loss of country, home, and people, In one mighty strain uniting,

Chant for every age its wail;
Make the suffering years reëcho
With the wounds and pains of yore;
Give a voice to every martyr
Ever hushed to death by pain,
Every smothered shriek of daughter
Burned upon the fagot's bier;
Bring the wander-years and exile,
Persecution's harsh assailment,
Ghetto misery and hounding,
To the ears of men to-day;
Link the dark and dreary ages
With the brighter future's glow;
Weave the past and hopeful present;
Bind the living with the sleeping,
Dust unto the dust confessing,
Even with the dead uniting,
When the soul would join with God.

Slowly creep the muffled murmurs.
As the leaves and flowers, conspiring,
Steal a breeze from summer's chamber,
Hum and mumble as they stroke it,
Smooth, caress, and gently coy it,
So this murmur spreads the voices

Of the praying synagogue,
As each lip repeats the sinning
Of his selfish, godless living,
By each mutter low recounting
Every single sin and crime-
How he falsified his neighbor,
Made a stumbling-block for blindness,
Cursed the deaf, unstaid the cripple,
Played his son and daughter wrong,
Tattled of his wife's behavior,
Made his father's age a load,
Spoke belittling of his mother,
Took advantage of the stupid,
Made the hungry buy their bread,
Turned the needy from his threshold,
Clothed the naked with his bareness,
Shut the stranger from his fold,
Never begged forgiveness, pardon,
For a wrong aimed at a foe,
Never weighed the love or mercy
Of the Father of the world.
Low the lips are now repenting;
Every mutter is a sob

Ebbing from the font of being;
Conscience speaks in lowest accents,
Lest the voice cry out to men.

Who has ever heard Kol Nidra
Gushing from the breast of man,
Rising, falling, as the ocean
Lifts the waves in joy or fear.
From Time's ocean has it risen;
Every age has lent a murmur,
Every cycle built a wail;
Every sorrow ever dwelling
In the tortured heart of man,
Tears and sighs together swelling,
Answer for the pangs of ages.
'Tis the voice of countless pilgrims,
Sons of Jacob, with a cry,
Moaning, sighing, grieving, wailing,
Answering in thousand voices
Fate and destiny of man,
Winning soul a consolation
For their sad allotment's creed;

Wander-song of homeless traveller,
Outcast from the ranks of men;
Echoes from the throes of mortals,
Questioning the ways of God;
Song hummed by the lonely desert,
Prompted by the heart of night,
Lisped across the sandy borders
By the desert's trailing wind;
Hymn of midnight and the silence,
Song the friendless stars intone,
Sung whene'er the tempest hurtles,
Bruits destruction to the world;
Song of every song of sorrow,
Wail for every grief and woe,
World affliction, world lamenting;
Sorrow of the lonely desert;
Sadness of a homeless people;
Anguish of a chided mortal,

Hounded, tracked, oppressed, and beaten,
Made the scourge of God on earth;
Outery of a sinful bosom
Warring with his guilt and wrong.
'Tis a saintly aspiration
Of a holy soul in prayer;
'Tis the music hummed by mercy,
When the heart is touched by love.
'Tis the welding of all mercy,
Love, forgiveness, in a union,
Sweeping o'er the span of ages,
Flooding earth with one majestic,
Universal hymn of woe,

As if God had willed his children
Weep in but one human strain.

Who can hear this strange Kol Nidra Without dropping in the spell? Lift the vestige of the present, Link the momentary fleeting Of the evening with the past; Dwell a spirit in the ages, Living in the heart of time: Lose the sense of outer worlds, Soul alone in endless time, Breathing but the breath of ages.

THE BANJO OF THE PAST

You ax about dat music made

On banjos long ago,

An' wants to know why it ain't played By niggers any mo'.

Dem banjos b'longed to by-gone days When times an' chunes was rare, When we was gay as children- 'case We did n't have a care.

But in her place I 've always kept
A borrowed chile, her size.
As soon as it outgrows my chile,
I lets it go, right straight-
An' takes another in its place

To match dat Heabenly mate.

It's took a sight o' chillin, sho',
To ease dat dull ol' pain,
An' keep de pretty likeness fresh
Of my dead Anna Jane.

Der's more den forty years, you see,
Since she has been in Heaben,
But wid de angels years don't count
So she's still only seben.

Time treats us all up dere, des lak
It do white ladies here-
It teches 'em so light
A gal at forty year!

one's still

What we flee that is far behind in the darkness,

Where the place of abiding for us, we know not;

Only we hark for the voice of the Master Herdsman.

Many a weary day must pass ere we hear it,

Blown on the winds, now close, now far in the distance,

Deep as the void above us and sweet as the dawn-star.

He it is who drives us and urges us always, Faint with a need that is ever present within us,

Struggling onward and toiling one by the other.

Ever we long and cry for rest, but it comes not;

Broke are our feet and sore and bruised by the climbing;

Sharp is his goad in our quivering flanks when we falter,

And some fall down with a plaintive moaning, and perish;