’Tis over ere you know it!”

The frost and cold with cruel knife The tender form assail. Ah, would you be a Jewish wife, You must not weep and quail!

And in—and out,—she leaps. Once more! Poor girl, it has not served you. No purer are you than before: A Gentile has observed you!

And into th’ icy flood again, In terror wild she leaps! The white limbs shudder... all in vain! The Christian still he peeps.

The frost and cold, they burn and bite, The women rub their fingers, The lovely child grows white and white, As on the bank she lingers.

“The Law, my child, we must fulfill, The scoundrel see depart! Yet once! ’tis but a moment’s chill, ’Tis but a trifling smart!”

The white-faced child the Law has kept, The covenant unstained, For in the waters deep she leapt, And there below remained.

 Atonement Evening Prayer

Atonement Day—evening pray’r—sadness profound. The soul-lights, so clear once, are dying around. The reader is spent, and he barely can speak; The people are faint, e’en the basso is weak. The choristers pine for the hour of repose. Just one—two chants more, and the pray’r book we close!

And now ev’ry Jew’s supplication is ended, And Nilah* approaching, and twilight descended. The blast of the New Year is blown on the horn, All go; by the Ark I am standing forlorn, And thinking: “How shall it be with us anon, When closed is the temple, and ev’ryone gone!”

[* Ne’ilah, (Hebrew) Conclusion, concluding prayer.]

 Exit Holiday

Farewell to the feast-day! the pray’r book is stained With tears; of the booth scarce a trace has remained; The lime branch is withered, the osiers are dying, And pale as a corpse the fair palm-frond is lying; The boughs of grey willow are trodden and broken— Friend, these are your hopes and your longings unspoken!

Lo, there lie your dreamings all dimm’d and rejected, And there lie the joys were so surely expected! And there is the happiness blighted and perished, And all that aforetime your soul knew and cherished, The loved and the longed for, the striven for vainly— Your whole life before you lies pictured how plainly!

The branches are sapless, the leaves will decay, 

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