Classic Poem

" His altars are cast down! They love another,
A heavy clod of senseless, speechless gold!
The wolves are many in Jehovah's fold,
And every heart by thine irreverent brother
To misery and damnation has been sold.

" Thy impious Aaron who from duty falters,
The pagan Levite, the anointed priest,
In orgy obscene and many a loathesome feast
Hails Apis now, and Mnevis, on thine altars,
And sacrifices to them herb and beast.

" By stern decrees implacable and cruel,
By threats and awful glitterings of glaives,
He has compelled us all, the free, the slaves,
To render up our every golden jewel;
Our wealth and hoardings the new fiend-god craves.

" Oh Moses, redolent of God! molested
By my weak cries, listen! Thy brother said:
" Let all the rings and all the bracelets, spread
Through Israel, from the men and maids be wrested
To form an image mighty and hallowed!"

" And oh! my precious rings were taken from me,
My darling jewels, yea, dearer than mine eyes,
Although I filled the camp with claims and cries;
Foul Aaron's hirelings strove to overcome me
And tore from out mine ears the bleeding prize,

" The priceless gift of my sweet lover cherished,
The pledge and cunning handiwork, alas!
Of him who engraved the tabernacle's brass,
Its gold and silver, which ere now have perished,
Doomed in the idol's sateless maw to pass!

" Bezaleel, he, than all the people wiser,
The chosen of God, the wondersmith, whose art
And beauty waved love's essence to my heart;
He, the miraculous and skilled deviser,
Who toiled for God and not the common mart,

" My life and love rest in the rings he gave me!
They were my all, his promise and my hope!
Must I in pain unutterable grope?
Oh, Moses! from my dawning madness save me!
Against my loss I can not, can not cope!

" Dearer were they to me, since he arrayed me
Proudly in all the burnished charm thereof,
Than future years of sweet, connubial love,
More than the child unborn that he has made me,
More than the God who hears me from above.

" Yet he, my lover, flouts me and accuses
My faithlessness with harsh, unfeeling tone;
He cries, deaf to my innocence alone:
" Helia! thou soldst them gladly!" and refuses
To call my love and body again his own.