and I looked around affrighted but saw naught to alarm me. Then I heard a voice, proceeding whence I knew not, saying:
The tongue of the prophets is in thy mouth, their words upon thy lips. Then take thou up the parable and speak thuswise:
Lo! in the heavens there are stars of many natures. Some are green, and some are blue, and some are of a burning red. These are double, and those are triple, and others are quite eccentric. Still none of them present to me the interest, the aspect of wonder and charm, as yonder minute star of the sixth magnitude which is scarce-
ly visible to the naked eye. For centuries upon centuries it held its modest place in the firmament, unwilling or unable to lead in the starry host. Modest in its demeanor, it is apparently content with its insignificant station among the multitudinous minor lights. Yet twice within the knowledge of men did it come forward to the first magnitude, glorious, resplendent above all the hosts of the firmament, filling the universe with its tremendous light and shaming the other lumnaries into pale insignificance.
The period of its reappearance is again about due, for that star is Israel!
A CRY FROM RUSSIA
Brothers, my brother—you that are freeIn the golden lands beyond the sea,Are you blind that you do not heed thescars
Of my futile hands as they beat the bars? Are you deaf that you do not heed the cry Of the Little Peoples who will not die? Who will not die, though sick with fear Without their Ghetto walls. Ah, hear The anguished cry of the mother of sons Who are spat on thus by the lordly ones: "Ye may not labor. Ye have no goal. Back to your hovels! Herd as the swine! Be eaten with fear to your very soul!" This is the birth of the coward's whine.
Brothers, my brothers, the days are longFor the wretched one who does no wrong,But to live through beggary, misery—aye
Worse than these—a Jew till he die.For he sucked, with the milk at hismother's breast,
Patience for scorn and patience for jest:Wounds of the body and wounds of thesoul,Till a day when the Lord God make himwhole.
That shining day he will bless the pain That has brought the Jew to his own again.
He will bless the pain. But brothers mine,Easy for you not to herd as swine:Prosperous, flourishing—kith and kin,Easy for you to stay clean within.But, O my Brothers, beyond the sea,The days are long and bitter for me!