Short Poems

In the beginning they were pure white, the round snowballs on the bushes — as are white and round the breasts of the maiden who has not as yet known of sin .
Later in August they turned rosy — (the sun passionately kissed them with his light,) as the chaste, tender, girlish face is rosy, flushed in her first love .
And now they stand altogether dark brown, yet still they dream on of white and rose ... They calmly sway in the still light, their brown heads drooping heavily on the sere grass .

It was a night, a cool summer night. Replete with blueness and moon-shine and love; she fell passionately upon the earth, like a passionate wealthy mother upon her friendless orphan, emraced her softly with velvety skies, kissed her with grass scents, caressed her with breezes, wept for joy with meteors, and somewhere a cricket sawed its serenade, and somewhere a frog croaked continually the " prayer before sleep, " and somewhere in the grass I lay forsaken — somewhere in the grass... The body clung to the ground; and the soul strayed and sought for a goal in heaven's deep.

O, you in whose sturdy singer's breast two abysses have united: the depth of the musing sky and the depth of the earth, rocked in stillness; in whose heart the sun shone and the moon; where the stars beamed clearly, entire worlds without number; in whose heart May was verdant, and where the thunder's peal mingled with the twittering of the nightingale; in whose marvelously powerful song one feels the omnipotence and the splendor of nature —
Immortal prophet! I give you praise. I fall in the dust before your dust and sing .

God's will! Let Him lead me wherever He will and how He will! Against Him I will not stand, and like a child I'll follow silently .
On hill tops, in deep ravines, with open eyes — yet blind; in the lair of wild beasts — the Father leads, the child will follow .

I'm a water current. Born by a mountain, and lost among high, waste rocks in a deep valley .
With a sad melody willows sway over me, and a grey melancholy has overtaken me .
To the great, broad ocean God Himself will take me. Throughout the deep waters He will distribute me .
Great God, what shall I have to relate to the tower-high waves, to the free storm-winds?

A word reposes in my heart, it is new and free and pious; I cannot utter it, I am still mute for it .
Someone else will say it in many years to come. Yet the word is mine — I have only been mute .

In the most distant lands we are scattered — each part a link in the long chain .
By all the rivers, not of Babylon alone, we have been sitting in search of a home .
Now the whole world is dear to us. There is pitched at the remotest shores a tent of ours .
Now the Vistula and the Rhine are dear to us, and the wide Dnieper also charms us with its murmur .
And the free Hudson beckons us with friendship. Here by its shores we at last get real rest .
Whatever song we hear, its tune seems familiar, whatever river purls, it awakens a yearning .

The eyes red, the lips blue, not a drop of blood in the cheek. The foreheads pale, and feverish — three girls sit and sew.
The needle flashes, the linen — snowy; and one thinks: I sew and sew, I sew by day, I sew by night — no bridal dress have I made for myself! What is the use of my sewing?
I neither sleep nor eat ... I would donate to Meir The Miracle Man — Perhaps he would stand me in good stead. Even a widower, an old Jew with a bevy of children.

Behind the hill roads are leading endlessly far away; behind the hill dark evenings alternate with bright days.
Behind the hill all eyes are turned in constant expectance; from behind the hill some Radiant One has to arrive to us in the valley below.

Lilies, white lilies are dying on the pond; for the last time the breeze blows over them, the ray of light glows for them a final time and for the last time the evening dew moistens them.
Unruffled waves hasten to greet their woe, butterflies come to weep over them and the flower-souls gather round and all kneel tremblingly and piously.
Colors in the west curb the playing, somewhere a shadow quietly sighs, and the wan grass also sighs. — — Lilies, white lilies are dying on the pond.