114

 114. Judaism  (A Tragic Chorus.)   O PITEOUS race!  Fearful to look upon,  Once standing in high place,  Heaven's eldest son.  O aged blind  Unvenerable! as thou flittest by,  I liken thee to him in pagan song,  In thy gaunt majesty,  The vagrant King, of haughty-purposed mind,  Whom prayer nor plague could bend [n.]; Wrong'd, at the cost of him who did the wrong, Accursed himself, but in his cursing strong,  And honour'd in his end.   O Abraham! sire,  Shamed in thy progeny;  Who to thy faith aspire,  Thy Hope deny.  Well wast thou given From out the heathen an adopted heir, Raised strangely from the dead when sin had   slain  Thy former-cherish'd care. O holy men, ye first-wrought gems of heaven  Polluted in your kin, Come to our fonts, your lustre to regain. O Holiest Lord! ... but Thou canst take no stain  Of blood, or taint of sin.   Twice in their day  Proffer of precious cost  Was made, Heaven's hand to stay  Ere all was lost.  The first prevail'd;  Moses was outcast from the promised home,  For his own sin, yet taken at his prayer  To change his people's doom.  Close on their eve, one other ask'd and fail'd;  When fervent Paul was fain The accursèd tree, as Christ had borne, to bear, No hopeful answer came, a Price more rare  Already shed in vain.

   Off Marseilles Harbour .  June 27, 1833.

 Note

 Vide the Rdipus Coloneus of Sophocles.