{"collection":"Judaism","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/jud/sig/sig22.htm","path":"jud/sig/sig22.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/jud/sig/sig22.htm","text":"Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol, tr. by Israel Zangwill, [1923]\nCantor to God:\n\"What profits it to see Thy people wallow,\n \u00a0\u00a0A prostrate lily whelmed in floods of water?\n She twitters like a caged and frightened swallow,\n \u00a0\u00a0When Thou art girt with weapons for her slaughter.\n Be over her, O Rock, a shield erected,\n And make Thy corner-stone of that rejected!\"\nCongregation:\n\"Before my foe I am humiliated,\n \u00a0\u00a0He sits in fatted ease while I must wander,\n Before his flouts and roars and blows prostrated,\n \u00a0\u00a0Yet I endure and fix my vision yonder,\n And wait for healing, with my crying stifled,\n Like Hannah\u2019s, and a heart subdued and rifled.\"\nCantor to Congregation:\n\"What ails thee that soul-sick and bitter-hearted,\n \u00a0\u00a0Thou faintest, face and hands with teardrops streaming?\n Sow charity, and kindness shall be carted,\n \u00a0\u00a0Who trusts in force is ignorantly dreaming.\n Oppression passes, trampled by oppression,\n And violence breeds violent succession.\"\nCongregation to Cantor:\n\"My years have gone in sorrow and in sighing,\n \u00a0\u00a0I hoped for respite but instead comes wailing,\n Before the balm arrives behold me dying.\"\n\"Ah wait, faint heart, that sighest, sick and failing,\n Thyself against God\u2019s mercy do not harden,\n Thou, eased of foes, shalt flower like a garden.\"\nCongregation to God:\n\"Mine eyes are sick and faint from hope\u2019s depression,\n \u00a0\u00a0Dumb like a sheep I bear Thy storm of fury,\n Perchance my pain shall cancel my transgression,\n \u00a0\u00a0Crush not the plagued and stricken son of Jewry,\nThe broken-hearted, crouching \u2019neath Thy rod,\n He waits Thee, night and day, O jealous God.\nGripped like a bird within its captor\u2019s fingers,\n And crushed to dust, I groan beyond all bearing.\"\nGod:\n\"Hearken, afflicted one, for hope yet lingers,\n \u00a0\u00a0And look to Me, whose angel is preparing\n My path, for though at night be tears and sadness\n Yet in the morning come delight and gladness.\"","title":"Selected Religious Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol: 19. Reas...","type":"page"}