Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES TO AN ANTI-SEMITE, by EDWARD SYDNEY TYBEE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES TO AN ANTI-SEMITE, by                    
First Line: Stand! As god saw thee of old time
Last Line: His dagger in thy side?
Subject(s): Anti-semitism; Jews; Judaism


STAND! as God saw thee of old time
We see and know thee now;
The brand of unforgotten crime
Still black upon thy brow,
That mark, Eternal Justice traced,
Thou coverest in vain;
Its blighting stigma uneffaced;
Where is thy brother, Cain?

Aye, hypocrite, and if thou wilt,
White hands, in protest, spread!
The blood by coarser murderers spilt
Was at thy bidding shed.
Thy speech inflamed each ignorant soul
With thine own maddening wine;
And when their fury burst control,
Their brutal acts were thine.

For thee the crowded Plaza seethed
Round Seville's high-built pyre;
And shrinking forms of women wreathed
With boiling snakes of fire.
Thy servants fanned their ardent breath
Into a fiercer flame;
And watched, well-pleased, the dallying death,
That lingered ere it came.

But thou hast darker secrets yet,
And deeds more dear to hell.
The sightless, sounding oubliette
Hath kept thy counsel well,
The silent hours that crush the heart,
The soul-destroying gloom;
Thine, devil, was the fiendish art
Devised that living tomb.

Woe, woe on the unhappy state
That learns thy bloody creed,
And makes her mansion desolate
Thy cruel lust to feed.
Before one dread, impartial Bar
Her sons, shall find ere long,
How terrible the helpless are,
The feeble ones how strong!

Lo! where the dotard Empress, Spain,
With loosened necklace stands,
While those fair jewels, grain by grain,
Slip from her nerveless hands!
Unmoved she sees her pearls depart
And smiles with alien eyes;
For heavy on her palsied heart
The curse of Israel lies.

Foul shark, whose malice never sleeps,
On noblest victims fed;
What swimmer bold shall cleave the deeps
Thy rivings left so red;
And when thy bulk sways up to breathe
On that encrimsoned tide,
With one unerring home-thrust sheathe
His dagger in thy side?





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