In the Jewish Synagogue at Newport

Here, where the noises of the busy town,

The ocean's plunge and roar can enter not,

We stand and gaze around with tearful awe,

And muse upon the consecrated spot.

No signs of life are here: the very prayers

Inscribed around are in a language dead;

The light of the "perpetual lamp" is spent

That an undying radiance was to shed.

What prayers were in this temple offered up,

Wrung from sad hearts that knew no joy on earth,

By these lone exiles of a thousand years,

From the fair sunrise land that gave them birth!

How as we gaze, in this new world of light,

Upon this relic of the days of old,

The present vanishes, and tropic bloom

And Eastern towns and temples we behold.

Again we see the patriarch with his flocks,

The purple seas, the hot blue sky o'erhead,

The slaves of Egypt, -- omens, mysteries, --

Dark fleeing hosts by flaming angels led.

A wondrous light upon a sky-kissed mount,

A man who reads Jehovah's written law,

'Midst blinding glory and effulgence rare,

Unto a people prone with reverent awe.