Classic Poem

Beside Babylonian waters
We halted; we rested unsleeping;
We hushed; we remembered the slaughters
Of Zion; remembered them weeping.

We covered our sorrowing faces,
Remembering Zion the splendid,
Her grandeurs, her delicate graces,
Now smitten and trampled and ended.

With sobbing and tears we remembered,
And hung up our harps on the willows
For beautiful Canaan dismembered,
For Judah gone down in the billows.

And they who destroyed us, whose fury
Had ravined and torn like a lion,
Said, " Sport ye, O captives of Jewry;
Now sing us the anthems of Zion. "

Ye cruel! our anthems are praises
To God; they are joyous as bridals.
How may we attune the sweet phrases
To chains, amid aliens and idols?

Jerusalem, should I forget thee,
Thou ruin that Babel disdaineth,
Or fail but a moment to set thee
Above every joy that remaineth;

Then perish the hand that hath holden
The harp while our choruses thundered!
And perish the cadences golden
That billowed till Israel wondered!