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(Rebecca’s Hymn from Ivanhoe)
WHEN Israel, of the Lord beloved, | |
| Out from the land of bondage came, | |
| Her fathers’ God before her moved, | |
| An awful guide in smoke and flame. | |
| By day, along the astonished lands | 5 |
| The cloudy pillar glided slow; | |
| By night, Arabia’s crimsoned sands | |
| Returned the fiery column’s glow. | |
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| There rose the choral hymn of praise, | |
| And trump and timbrel answered keen, | 10 |
| And Zion’s daughters poured their lays, | |
| With priest’s and warrior’s voice between. | |
| No portents now our foes amaze,— | |
| Forsaken Israel wanders lone; | |
| Our fathers would not know thy ways, | 15 |
| And thou hast left them to their own. | |
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| But, present still, though now unseen, | |
| When brightly shines the prosperous day, | |
| Be thoughts of thee a cloudy screen, | |
| To temper the deceitful ray. | 20 |
| And, O, when stoops on Judah’s path | |
| In shade and storm the frequent night, | |
| Be thou, long-suffering, slow to wrath, | |
| A burning and a shining light! | |
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| Our harps we left by Babel’s streams,— | 25 |
| The tyrant’s jest, the Gentile’s scorn; | |
| No censer round our altar beams, | |
| And mute are timbrel, trump, and horn. | |
| But thou hast said, the blood of goats, | |
| The flesh of rams, I will not prize,— | 30 |
| A contrite heart and humble thoughts | |
| Are mine accepted sacrifice. | |
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