Classic Poem

“Yet now in anguish must I slay my son,
The one I pitifully look upon,
The guardian of my future and my token!
If I should take his guiltless life away.
As Thou ordainest on this hateful day,
Will not Thy promise, God august, be broken?”

But stronger voices cried again: “Obey!
Obey! Prove now thy rooted trust and slay!
God's wrath by thy enormous tribulation
Must be appeased, and by the awful deed;
Although thy father-heart must swell and bleed,
The sacrifice will gain thee sweet salvation!”

And Abram said to Isaac: “Now behold!
By visions terrible and manifold,
Jehovah warns me that this hand has doomed thee;
Thou must submit to Heaven's divine decrees,
With joy and prayer, and on thy bended knees,
For all the tempests of His ire have gloomed thee!”

Then Isaac lifted up his weary head,
And in a murmur, like a faint wind, said:
“Weep not, my father, by the Great One chidden!
Beyond the anguish here my eyes see light!
Obey, before I die of thirst, and smite!
Do thou as God has mercifully bidden.”

But Abram, hunger-mad, heard not his words;
Around them hovered gaunt, ill-omened birds,
Eager as he for flesh and sweet nutrition.
Then on his son's pale, shriveled limbs he gazed,
And like a beast by fiercest famine crazed,
He craved his blood in brutal inanition.

A mist of red arose before his eyes,
And with a cry that would God agonize,
Hot hunger in his heart of desolation,
He stood erect amid the sands that hour,
With hideous glances, eager to devour
His child, his blood, his Isaac, his salvation!

And as the guilty patriarch raised the knife
To immolate that pure and sacred life,
The lips of Isaac opened and, enraptured,
He cried: “Oh father, see!” and, fear-compelled,
He turned and saw a struggling ram withheld
By firm resisting brambles bound and captured.

Then, ravenous, he rushed upon the prey,
And cruelly and swiftly he did slay
The brute appalled, draining his life-blood madly,
And, when the flesh his craving did appease,
Bloody and trembling, on his aged knees
He fell and praised the Lord Jehovah gladly.

Then Isaac moaned forth weakly: “Father, dear,
Hath mercy touched the heart of God austere?
Hath He, omnipotent, seen well to save me,
Or hath He done so for dear Ishmael's sake?”
And Abram turned his head and said: “Partake
This food in ways miraculous He gave me.”


And Abram turned unto his home and sod,
And to the people there he told how God
Had tried his faith, and how he had not blundered.
But Isaac marveled and, with downcast eyes,
Gazed on his father with a strange surprise,
But spake no word, while all the people wondered.