Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LEGENDARY LIGHTS, by ALTER ABELSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LEGENDARY LIGHTS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: O, the legendary light
Last Line: The omnipotence of right.
Subject(s): Fasts & Feasts; Hanukkah; Holocaust, Jewish - Liberation; Jews; Light; Judaism


O, THE legendary light,
Gleaming goldenly in night
Like the stars above,
Beautiful, like lights in dream,
Eight, the taper-flames that stream
All one glory and one love.

In our Temple, magical—
Memories, now tragical—
Holy hero-hearts aflame
With a glory more than fame;
There where a shrine is every sod,
Every grave, God's golden ore,
With a paean whose rhyme to God,
Lit these lamps of yore.

Lights, you are a living dream,
Faith and bravery you beam,
Youth and dawn and May.
Would your beam were more than dream,
Would the light and love you stream,
Stirred us, spurred us, aye!

Fabled memories of flame,
Till the beast in man we tame,
Tyrants bow to truth, amain,
Brands and bullets yield to brain,
Guns to God, and shells to soul,
Hounds to heart resign the rôle,
Pillared lights of liberty,
In your fairy flames, we'll see
Faith's and freedom's Phoenix-might,
The Omnipotence of Right.





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