By the Waters of Babylon

B. C. 570.

Here, where I dwell, I waste to skin and bone; / The curse is come upon me, and I waste / In penal torment powerless to atone. / The curse is come on me, which makes no haste / And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud / Hard man and him the sinner double-faced. / Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed / Within me, as my body in this mire; / My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore bestead and cowed / As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire, / As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal, / So we the elect ones perish in His ire. / Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneel / With famished faces toward Jerusalem: / His heart is shut against us not to feel, / His ears against our cry He shutteth them, / His hand He shorteneth that He will not save, / His law is loud against us to condemn: / And we, as unclean bodies in the grave / Inheriting corruption and the dark, / Are outcast from His presence which we crave. / Our Mercy hath departed from His Ark, / Our Glory hath departed from His rest, / Our Shield hath left us naked as a mark / Unto all pitiless eyes made manifest. / Our very Father hath forsaken us, / Our God hath cast us from Him: we oppress'd / Unto our foes are even marvellous, / A hissing and a butt for pointing hands, / Whilst God Almighty hunts and grinds us thus; / For He hath scattered us in alien lands, / Our priests, our princes, our anointed king, / And bound us hand and foot with brazen bands. / Here while I sit, my painful heart takes wing / Home to the home-land I may see no more, / Where milk and honey flow, where waters spring / And fail not, where I dwelt in days of yore / Under my fig-tree and my fruitful vine, / There where my parents dwelt at ease before: / Now strangers press the olives that are mine, / Reap all the corners of my harvest-field, / And make their fat hearts wanton with my wine; / To them my trees, to them my gardens yield / Their sweets and spices and their tender green, / O'er them in noontide heat outspread their shield. / Yet these are they whose fathers had not been / Housed with my dogs; whom hip and thigh we smote / And with their blood washed their pollutions clean, / Purging the land which spewed them from its throat; / Their daughters took we for a pleasant prey, / Choice tender ones on whom the fathers dote: / Now they in turn have led our own away; / Our daughters and our sisters and our wives / Sore weeping as they weep who curse the day, / To live, remote from help, dishonoured lives, / Soothing their drunken masters with a song, / Or dancing in their golden tinkling gyves -- / Accurst if they remember through the long / Estrangement of their exile, twice accursed / If they forget and join the accursèd throng. / How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst / When I remember that my way was plain, / And that God's candle lit me at the first, / Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain, / Desiring but to find Him Who is lost, / To find him once again, but once again! / His wrath came on us to the uttermost, / His covenanted and most righteous wrath. / Yet this is He of Whom we made our boast, / Who lit the Fiery Pillar in our path, / Who swept the Red Sea dry before our feet, / Who in His jealousy smote kings, and hath / Sworn once to David: One shall fill thy seat / Born of thy body, as the sun and moon / 'Stablished for aye in sovereignty complete. / O Lord, remember David, and that soon. / The Glory hath departed, Ichabod! / Yet now, before our sun grow dark at noon, / Before we come to nought beneath Thy rod, / Before we go down quick into the pit, / Remember us for good, O God, our God: -- / Thy Name will I remember, praising it, / Though Thou forget me, though Thou hide Thy face, / And blot me from the Book which Thou hast writ; / Thy Name will I remember in my praise / And call to mind Thy faithfulness of old, / Though as a weaver Thou cut off my days / And end me as a tale ends that is told.