Around me Jehovah rose with angered glares,
I heard the prophets’ voices that strangely shook,
On the Levite’s burdened backs, amidst trumpet blares
The covenant shone from the bloody brook.
I saw where Ruth once passed through the fields of grain
And on far Caramel’s, pleasant sloping side,
My fantasy wove on its charm again,
More beautiful than Solomon's cloak and pride.
Yon bluish lake, of biblical Simon’s fame
How you have pierced my soul, you distant height,
Where the Master wrapped himself with a blinding flame
And Golgotha trembled with a bloody fright.
Like a foreign bind-week that has been planted deep
About a homegrown bush, entwines its stem,
And weaves through blossoms that impertinently creep
On every side, to the bush-tops crowning hem.
Thus has the soul of Palestine from childhood days
Embraced us with its hundreds of varied chains
And slowly changed our beings and our ways,
Giving its imprint to our dreams and brains.
The Jewish tribe can proudly raise its head
Above all those who would besmear its birth
For with its soul, it slowly overspread
All men and slowly reached all points on Earth.
Our God, Our Saviour, the birth of man,
Our paradise, our Hell, our views of life,
Each thought with which, we would the unknown scan
Has parts at least of Hebrew faith and strife.
Thus I grew up with dreams of you, my Palestine,
But oft your foreign image crossed my thought
The glaring light of Suns that elsewhere shine
The breath of foreign races that you brought.
It seemed I felt a different blood in me
New, different thought, emotions, sentiment,
And differently, than where the palms grow past the sea
My scenes were colored by our blue-tinged firmament.
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