Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WANDERING JEW, by DAVID LEVI


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WANDERING JEW, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Seek not what I am to know
Last Line: For pity as for scorn.
Subject(s): Jews; Wandering Jew; Judaism


SEEK not what I am to know,
What my name is, never crave,
God records it, Earth and Woe,
It may radiate the grave,
If at last my tears' long flow
Should melt the stones to hear.

Wandering ever—I, forlorn,
Refuge seek for this poor frame.
Thinking, suffering;—Man, base-born,
Spurns my right, ignores my claim—
I pass his tortures, scorn
His piety and his jeers.

Wandering ever—storms and ire
Burst with fury on my brow,
Adam's curse I bore entire,
Wretched, yet too proud to bow;
Victim ever, on the pyre
I laved in grief each sin.

Midst the whirlwind raging round,
Vanished lands, seas disappeared,
Crumbled all, mere dust I found,
Empires, temples, shrines revered;
But immortal lived Thought bound
My heart's sad depths within.

From life's dawn that thought upgrew,
Ever present to my mind,
Vast, sublime, it shone and grew,
All to it,—a setless sun.
Glory o'er the Past it threw
And o'er the Future—Light.

Longing for the Infinite
Moved me ever, spurs me now,
But the end has not dawned yet,
Hope unripe hangs on the bough,
Ages do I wait and fret
For that which comes not nigh.

Years to me are moments brief,
Small the Universe appears,
Deep in thought, immersed in grief,
Weighing tyrants with men's fears,
Sweep I Hope's harp for relief
And raise wild terror's cry.

Every suffering has been mine—
Outrage, insult, struggle, pain,
Strong in sovereign thought divine,
All I challenge, all disdain.
Foes will fail—not my faith's shrine,
No time has that uptorn.

Seek not what I am to know,
What my name is rests in gloom,
God records it, Earth and Woe,
But 'tis hidden from the Tomb;
Torture me, contempt I show
For pity as for scorn.





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