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Home  »  The Standard Book of Jewish Verse  »  Israel and His Book

Joseph Friedlander, comp. The Standard Book of Jewish Verse. 1917.

By Felix N. Gerson

Israel and His Book

AN AGE-WORN wanderer, pale with thought and tears,

With heart heroic and prophetic look,

Comes clasping to his breast the Sacred Book—

The amulet of Israel through the years!

“Behold!” he says, “through ages dark with fears,

Through travail and through miseries that shook

The soul of Judah, this he ne’er forsook.

It is his Book!—Therein his God appears!”

His Book! more glorious with supernal light

Than all the beacons reared by mortal hands

Since time first lisped its anguish in the night.

His Book! That gave a God to all the lands;

Whose pages shall through us again reveal

The wondrous promise grief could not conceal!