The Poems of Emma Lazarus, Volume 2 / Jewish poems: Translations

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
     O Christ, disgraced, insulted!  Horrible man,
     Remembered be your laugh in lowest hell,
     Dragging you to the nether pit!  Forgive me;
     You are my friend—take me from here—unbolt
     Those iron doors—I'll crawl upon my knees
     Unto my father—I have much to tell him.
     For but the freedom of one hour, sweet Prior,
     I'll brim the vessels of the Church with gold.

     PRIOR.
     Boy! your bribes touch not, nor your curses shake
     The minister of Christ.  Yet I will bear
     Your message to the Landgrave.

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
               Whet your tongue
     Keen as the archangel's blade of truth—your voice
     Be as God's thunder, and your heart one blaze—
     Then can you speak my cause.  With me, it needs
     No plausive gift; the smitten head, stopped throat,
     Blind eyes and silent suppliance of sorrow
     Persuade beyond all eloquence.  Great God!
     Here while I rage and beat against my bars,
     The infernal fagots may be stacked for her,
     The hell-spark kindled.  Go to him, dear Prior,
     Speak to him gently, be not too much moved,
     'Neath its rude case you had ever a soft heart,
     And he is stirred by mildness more than passion.
     Recall to him her round, clear, ardent eyes,
     The shower of sunshine that's her hair, the sheen
     Of the cream-white flesh—shall these things serve as fuel?
     Tell him that when she heard once he was wounded,
     And how he bled and anguished; at the tale
     She wept for pity.

     PRIOR.
               If her love be true
     She will adore her lover's God, embrace
     The faith that marries you in life and death.
     This promise with the Landgrave would prevail
     More than all sobs and pleadings.

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
               Save her, save her!
     If any promise, vow, or oath can serve.
     Oh trusting, tranquil Susskind, who estopped
     Your ears forewarned, bandaged your visioned eyes,
     To woo destruction!  Stay! did he not speak
     Of amulet or talisman?  These horrors
     Have crowded out my wits.  Yea, the gold casket!
     What fixed serenity beamed from his brow,
     Laying the precious box within my hands!
     [He brings from the shelf the casket, and hands it to the Prior.]
     Deliver this unto the Prince my father,
     Nor lose one vital moment.  What it holds,
     I guess not—but my light heart whispers me
     The jewel safety's locked beneath its lid.

     PRIOR.
     First I must foil such devil's tricks as lurk
     In its gem-crusted cabinet.

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
                Away!
     Deliverance posts on your return.  I feel it.
     For your much comfort thanks.  Good-night.

     PRIOR.
               Good-night.
     [Exit.]

       A cell in the Wartburg Monastery.  Enter PRIOR PEPPERCORN with
       the casket.

     PRIOR.
     So!  Glittering shell where doubtless shines concealed
     An orient treasure fit to bribe a king,
     Ransom a prince and buy him for a son.
     I have baptized thee now before the altar,
     Effaced the Jew's contaminating touch,
     And I am free to claim the Church's tithe
     From thy receptacle.
     [He is about to unlock the casket, when enters Lay-Brother, and he
     hastily conceals it.]

     LAY-BROTHER.
               Peace be thine, father!

     PRIOR.
     Amen! and thine.  What's new?

     LAY-BROTHER.
                A strange Flagellant
     Fresh come to Wartburg craves a word with thee.

     PRIOR.
     Bid him within.
     [Exit Lay-Brother.
     PRIOR places the casket in a Cabinet.]
               Patience!  No hour of the day
     Brings freedom to the priest.

       Reenter Lay-Brother ushering in NORDMANN, and exit.

               Brother, all hail!
     Blessed be thou who comest in God's name!

     NORDMANN.
     May the Lord grant thee thine own prayer fourfold!

     PRIOR.
     What is thine errand?

     NORDMANN.
               Look at me, my father.
     Long since you called me friend.
     [The PRIOR looks at him attentively, while an expression of wonder
     and terror gradually overspreads his face.]

     PRIOR.
               Almighty God!
     The grave gives up her dead.  Thou canst not be—

     NORDMANN.
     Nordmann of Nordmannstein, the Knight of Treffurt.

     PRIOR.
     He was beheaded years agone.

     NORDMANN.
               His death
     Had been decreed, but in his stead a squire
     Clad in his garb and masked, paid bloody forfeit.
     A loyal wretch on whom the Prince wreaked vengeance,
     Rather than publish the true bird had flown.

     PRIOR.
     Does Frederick know thou art in Eisenach?

     NORDMANN.
     Who would divine the Knight of Nordmannstein
     In the Flagellants' weeds?  From land to land,
     From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews!
     Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!"
     They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned;
     Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard,
     Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague,
     Had the truth squeezed from them with screws and racks,
     All with explicit date, place, circumstance,
     And written as it fell from dying lips
     By scriveners of the law.  On their confession
     The Jews of Savoy were destroyed.  To-morrow noon
     The holy flames shall dance in Nordhausen.

     PRIOR.
     Your zeal bespeaks you fair.  In your deep eyes
     A mystic fervor shines; yet your scarred flesh
     And shrunken limbs denote exhausted nature,
     Collapsing under discipline.

     NORDMANN.
               Speak not
     Of the degrading body and its pangs.
     I am all zeal, all energy, all spirit.
     Jesus was wroth at me, at all the world,
     For our indulgence of the flesh, our base
     Compounding with his enemies the Jews.
     But at Madonna Mary's intercession,
     He charged an angel with this gracious word,
     "Whoso will scourge himself for forty days,
     And labor towards the clean extermination
     Of earth's corrupting vermin, shall be saved."
     Oh, what vast peace this message brought my soul!
     I have learned to love the ecstasy of pain.
     When the sweat stands upon my flesh, the blood
     Throbs in my bursting veins, my twisted muscles
     Are cramped with agony, I seem to crawl
     Anigh his feet who suffered on the Cross.

     PRIOR.
     O all transforming Time!  Can this be he,
     The iron warrior of a decade since,
     The gallant youth of earlier years, whose pranks
     And reckless buoyancy of temper flashed
     Clear sunshine through my gloom?

     NORDMANN.
               I am unchanged
     (Save that the spirit of grace has fallen on me).
     Urged by one motive through these banished years,
     Fed by one hope, awake to realize
     One living dream—my long delayed revenge.
     You saw the day when Henry Schnetzen's castle
     Was razed with fire?

     PRIOR.
          I saw it.

     NORDMANN.
               Schnetzen's wife,
     Three days a mother, perished.

     PRIOR.
               And his child?

     NORDMANN.
     His child was saved.

     PRIOR.
          By whom?

     NORDMANN.
               By the same Jew
     Who had betrayed the Castle.

     PRIOR.
               Susskind von Orb?

     NORDMANN.
     Susskind von Orb! and Schnetzen's daughter lives
     As the Jew's child within the Judengasse.

     PRIOR (eagerly).
     What proof hast thou of this?

     NORDMANN.
               Proof of these eyes!
     I visited von Orb to ask a loan.
     There saw I such a maiden as no Jew
     Was ever blessed withal since Jesus died.
     White as a dove, with hair like golden floss,
     Eyes like an Alpine lake.  The haughty line
     Of brow imperial, high bridged nose, fine chin,
     Seemed like the shadow cast upon the wall,
     Where Lady Schnetzen stood.

     PRIOR.
               Why hast thou ne'er
     Discovered her to Schnetzen?

     NORDMANN.
               He was my friend.
     I shared with him thirst, hunger, sword, and fire.
     But he became a courtier.  When the Margrave
     Sent me his second challenge to the field,
     His messenger was Schnetzen!  'Mongst his knights,
     The apple of his eye was Henry Schnetzen.
     He was the hound that hunted me to death.
     He stood by Frederick's side when I was led,
     Bound, to the presence.  I denounced him coward,
     He smote me on the cheek.  Christ! it stings yet.
     He hissed—"My liege, let Henry Nordmann hang!
     He is no knight, for he receives a blow,
     Nor dare avenge it!"  My gyved wrists moved not,
     No nerve twitched in my face, although I felt
     Flame leap there from my heart, then flying back,
     Leave it cold-bathed with deathly ooze—my soul
     In silence took her supreme vow of hate.

     PRIOR.
     Praise be to God that thou hast come to-day.
     To-morrow were too late.  Hast thou not heard
     Frederick sends Schnetzen unto Nordhausen,
     With fire and torture for the Jews?

     NORDMANN.
               So!  Henry Schnetzen
     Shall be the Jews' destroyer?  Ah!

     PRIOR.
               One moment.
     Mayhap this box which Susskind sends the Prince
     Reveals more wonders.
     [He brings forth the Casket from the Cabinet, opens it, and
     discovers a golden cross and a parchment which he hastily
     overlooks.]
               Hark! your word's confirmed
     Blessed be Christ, our Lord! (reads).

     "I Susskind von Orb of Nordhausen, swear by the unutterable Name,
     that on the day when the Castle of Salza was burned, I rescued the
     infant daughter of Henry Schnetzen from the flames.  I purposed
     restoring her to her father, but when I returned to Nordhausen, I
     found my own child lying on her bier, and my wife in fevered frenzy
     calling for her babe.  I sought the leech, who counselled me to
     show the Christian child to the bereaved mother as her own.  The
     pious trick prevailed; the fever broke, the mother was restored.
     But never would she part with the child, even when she had learned
     to whom it belonged, and until she was gathered with the dead—may
     peace be with her soul!—she fostered in our Jewish home the
     offspring of the Gentile knight.  Then again would I have yielded
     the girl to her parent, but Schnetzen was my foe, and I feared the
     haughty baron would disown the daughter who came from the hands of
     the Jew.  Now however the maiden's temporal happiness demands that
     she be acknowledged by her rightful father.  Let him see what I
     have written.  As a token, behold this golden cross, bound by the
     Lady Schnetzen round the infant's neck.  May the God of Abraham,
     Isaac, and Jacob redeem and bless me as I have writ the truth."

     PRIOR.
     I thank the Saints that this has come betimes.
     Thou shalt renounce thy hate.  Vengeance is mine,
     The Lord hath said.

     NORDMANN.
               O all-transforming Time!
     Is this meek, saintly-hypocrite, the firm,
     Ambitious, resolute Reinhard Peppercorn,
     Terror of Jews and beacon of the Church?
     Look, you, I have won the special grace of Christ,
     He knows through what fierce anguish!  Now he leans
     Out of his heaven to whisper in mine ear,
     And reach me my revenge.  He makes my cause
     His own—and I shall fail upon these heights,
     Sink from the level of a hate sublime,
     To puerile pity!

     PRIOR.
               Be advised.  You hold
     Your enemy's living heart within your hands.
     This secret is far costlier than you dreamed,
     For Frederick's son wooes Schnetzen's daughter.  See,
     A hundred delicate springs your wit may move,
     Your puppets are the Landgrave and the Prince,
     The Governor of Salza and the Jews.
     You may recover station, wealth, and honor,
     Selling your secret shrewdly; while rash greed
     Of clumsy vengeance may but drag you down
     In the wild whirl of universal ruin.

     NORDMANN.
     Christ teach me whom to trust!  I would not spill
     One drop from out this brimming glorious cup
     For which my parched heart pants.  I will consider.

     PRIOR.
     Pardon me now, if I break off our talk.
     Let all rest as it stands until the dawn.
     I have many orisons before the light.

     NORDMANN.
     Good-night, true friend.  Devote a prayer to me.
     (Aside.) I will outwit you, serpent, though you glide
     Athwart the dark, noiseless and swift as fate.
     [Exit].

     SCENE II.

       On the road to Nordhausen.  Moonlit, rocky landscape.  On the
       right between high, white cliffs a narrow stream spanned by a
       wooden bridge.  Thick bushes and trees.  Enter PRINCE WILLIAM
       and PAGE.

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
     Is this the place where we shall find fresh steeds?
     Would I had not dismounted!

     PAGE.
               Nay, sir; beyond
     The Werra bridge the horses wait for us.
     These rotten planks would never bear their weight.

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
     When I am Landgrave these things shall be cared for.
     This is an ugly spot for travellers
     To loiter in.  How swift the water runs,
     Brawling above our voices.  Human cries
     Would never reach Liborius' convent yonder,
     Perched on the sheer, chalk cliff.  I think of peril,
     From my excess of joy.  My spirit chafes,
     She that would breast broad-winged the air, must halt
     On stumbling mortal limbs.  Look, thither, boy,
     How the black shadows of the tree-boles stripe
     The moon-blanched bridge and meadow.

     PAGE.
               Sir, what's that?
     Yon stir and glitter in the bush?

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
               The moon,
     Pricking the dewdrops, plays fantastic tricks
     With objects most familiar.  Look again,
     And where thou sawst the steel-blue flicker glint,
     Thou findst a black, wet leaf.

     PAGE.
               No, no! O God!
     Your sword, sir!  Treason!
     [Four armed masked men leap from out the bush, seize, bind, and
     overmaster, after a brief but violent resistance, the Prince and
     his servant.]

     PRINCE WILLIAM.
               Who are ye, villains? lying
     In murderous ambush for the Prince of Meissen?
     If you be knights, speak honorably your names,
     And I will combat you in knightly wise.
     If ye be robbers, name forthwith your ransom.
     Let me but speed upon my journey now.
     By Christ's blood!  I beseech you, let me go!
     Ho! treason! murder! help!
     [He is dragged off struggling.  Exeunt omnes.]

     SCENE III.

       Nordhausen.  A room in SUSSKIND's house.
     LIEBHAID and CLAIRE.

     LIEBHAID.
     Say on, poor girl, if but to speak these horrors
     Revive not too intense a pang.

     CLAIRE.
               Not so.
     For all my woes seem here to merge their flood
     Into a sea of infinite repose.
     Through France our journey led, as I have told,
     From desolation unto desolation.
     Naught stayed my father's course—sword, storm, flame, plague,
     Exhaustion of the eighty year old frame,
     O'ertaxed beyond endurance.  Once, once only,
     His divine force succumbed.  'T was at day's close,
     And all the air was one discouragement
     Of April snow-flakes.  I was drenched, cold, sick,
     With weariness and hunger light of head,
     And on the open road, suddenly turned
     The whole world like the spinning flakes of snow.
     My numb hand slipped from his, and all was blank.
     His beard, his breath upon my brow, his tears
     Scalding my cheek hugged close against his breast,
     And in my ear deep groans awoke me.  "God!"
     I heard him cry, "try me not past my strength.
     No prophet I, a blind, old dying man!"
     Gently I drew his face to mine, and kissed,
     Whispering courage—then his spirit broke
     Utterly; shattered were his wits, I feared.
     But past is past; he is at peace, and I
     Find shelter from the tempest.  Tell me rather
     Of your serene life.

     LIEBHAID.
               Happiness is mute.
     What record speaks of placid, golden days,
     Matched each with each as twins?  Till yester eve
     My life was simple as a song.  At whiles
     Dark tales have reached us of our people's wrongs,
     Strange, far-off anguish, furrowing with fresh care
     My father's brow, draping our home with gloom.
     We were still blessed; the Landgrave is his friend—
     The Prince—my Prince—dear Claire, ask me no more!
     My adored enemy, my angel-fiend,
     Splitting my heart against my heart!  O God,
     How shall I pray for strength to love him less
     Than mine own soul?

     CLAIRE.
               What mean these contrary words?
     These passionate tears?

     LIEBHAID.
               Brave girl, who art inured
     To difficult privation and rude pain,
     What good shall come forswearing kith and God,
     To follow the allurements of the heart?

     CLAIRE.
     Duty wears one face, but a thousand masks.
     Thy feet she leads to glittering peaks, while mine
     She guides midst brambled roadways.  Not the first
     Art thou of Israel's women, chosen of God,
     To rule o'er rulers.  I remember me
     A verse my father often would repeat
     Out of our sacred Talmud: "Every time
     The sun, moon, stars begin again their course,
     They hesitate, trembling and filled with shame,
     Blush at the blasphemous worship offered them,
     And each time God's voice thunders, crying out,
     On with your duty!"

       Enter REUBEN.

     REUBEN.
               Sister, we are lost!
     The streets are thronged with panic-stricken folk.
     Wild rumors fill the air.  Two of our tribe,
     Young Mordecai, as I hear, and old Baruch,
     Seized by the mob, were dragged towards Eisenach,
     Cruelly used, left to bleed out their lives,
     In the wayside ditch at night.  This morn, betimes,
     The iron-hearted Governor of Salza
     Rides furious into Nordhausen; his horse,
     Spurred past endurance, drops before the gate.
     The Council has been called to hear him read
     The Landgrave's message,—all men say, 'tis death
     Unto our race.

     LIEBHAID.
               Where is our father, Reuben?

     REUBEN.
     With Rabbi Jacob.  Through the streets they walk,
     Striving to quell the terror.  Ah, too late!
     Had he but heeded the prophetic voice,
     This warning angel led to us in vain!

     LIEBHAID.
     Brother, be calm.  Man your young heart to front
     Whatever ills the Lord afflicts us with.
     What does Prince William?  Hastes he not to aid?

     REUBEN.
     None know his whereabouts.  Some say he's held
     Imprisoned by the Landgrave.  Others tell
     While he was posting with deliverance
     To Nordhausen, in bloody Schnetzen's wake,
     He was set upon by ruffians—kidnapped—killed.
     What do I know—hid till our ruin's wrought.
     [LIEBHAID swoons.]

     CLAIRE.
     Hush, foolish boy.  See how your rude words hurt.
     Look up, sweet girl; take comfort.

     REUBEN.
               Pluck up heart:
     Dear sister, pardon me; he lives, he lives!

     LIEBHAID.
     God help me!  Shall my heart crack for love's loss
     That meekly bears my people's martyrdom?
     He lives—I feel it—to live or die with me.
     I love him as my soul—no more of that.
     I am all Israel's now—till this cloud pass,
     I have no thought, no passion, no desire,
     Save for my people.

       Enter SUSSKIND.

     SUSSKIND.
               Blessed art thou, my child!
     This is the darkest hour before the dawn.
     Thou art the morning-star of Israel.
     How dear thou art to me—heart of my heart,
     Mine, mine, all mine to-day! the pious thought,
     The orient spirit mine, the Jewish soul.
     The glowing veins that sucked life-nourishment
     From Hebrew mother's milk.  Look at me, Liebhaid,
     Tell me you love me.  Pity me, my God!
     No fiercer pang than this did Jephthah know.

     LIEBHAID.
     Father, what wild and wandering words are these?
     Is all hope lost?

     SUSSKIND.
               Nay, God is good to us.
     I am so well assured the town is safe,
     That I can weep my private loss—of thee.
     An ugly dream I had, quits not my sense,
     That you, made Princess of Thuringia,
     Forsook your father, and forswore your race.
     Forgive me, Liebhaid, I am calm again,
     We must be brave—I who besought my tribe
     To bide their fate in Nordhausen, and you
     Whom God elects for a peculiar lot.
     With many have I talked; some crouched at home,
     Some wringing hands about the public ways.
     I gave all comfort.  I am very weary.
     My children, we had best go in and pray,
     Solace and safety dwell but in the Lord.
     [Exeunt.]

     SCENE I.

       The City Hall at Nordhausen.  Deputies and Burghers assembling.
       To the right, at a table near the President's chair, is seated
       the Public Scrivener.  Enter DIETRICH VON TETTENBORN, and HENRY

     SCHNETZEN with an open letter in his hand.

     SCHNETZEN.
     Didst hear the fellow's words who handed it?
     I asked from whom it came, he spoke by rote,
     "The pepper bites, the corn is ripe for harvest,
     I come from Eisenach."  'T is some tedious jest.

     TETTENBORN.
     Doubtless your shrewd friend Prior Peppercorn
     Masks here some warning.  Ask the scrivener
     To help us to its contents.

     SCHNETZEN (to the clerk).
               Read me these.

     SCRIVENER (reads).

     "Beware, Lord Henry Schnetzen, of Susskind's lying tongue!  He will
     thrust a cuckoo's egg into your nest.
                                  [Signed]
     ONE WHO KNOWS."

     SCHNETZEN.
     A cuckoo's egg! that riddle puzzles me;
     But this I know.  Schnetzen is no man's dupe,
     Much less a Jew's.
     [SCHNETZEN and VON TETTENBORN take their seats side by side.]

     TETTENBORN.
     Knights, counsellors and burghers!
     Sir Henry Schnetzen, Governor of Salza,
     Comes on grave mission from His Highness Frederick,
     Margrave of Meissen, Landgrave of Thuringia,
     Our town's imperial Patron and Protector.

     SCHNETZEN.
     Gentles, I greet you in the Landgrave's name,
     The honored bearer of his princely script,
     Sealed with his signet.  Read, good Master Clerk.
     [He hands a parchment to the Scrivener, who reads aloud]:

       Lord President and Deputies of the town of Nordhausen!  Know that
     we, Frederick Margrave of Meissen, and Landgrave of Thuringia,
     command to be burned all the Jews within our territories as far
     as our lands extend, on account of the great crime they have
     committed against Christendom in throwing poison into the wells,
     of the truth of which indictment we have absolute knowledge.
     Therefore we admonish you to have the Jews killed in honor of
     God, so that Christendom be not enfeebled by them.  Whatever
     responsibility you incur, we will assume with our Lord the Emperor,
     and with all other lords.  Know also that we send to you Henry
     Schnetzen, our Governor of Salza, who shall publicly accuse your
     Jews of the above-mentioned crime.  Therefore we beseech you to
     help him to do justice upon them, and we will singularly reward
     your good will.*

       Given at Eisenach, the Thursday after St. Walpurgis, under our
     secret seal.

       *This is an authentic document.

     A COUNSELLOR (DIETHER VON WERTHER).
     Fit silence welcomes this unheard-of wrong!
     So!  Ye are men—free, upright, honest men,
     Not hired assassins?  I half doubted it,
     Seeing you lend these infamous words your ears.

     SCHNETZEN.
     Consider, gentlemen of Nordhausen,
     Ere ye give heed to the rash partisan.
     Ye cross the Landgrave—well? he crosses you.
     It may be I shall ride to Nordhausen,
     Not with a harmless script, but with a sword,
     And so denounce the town for perjured vow.
     What was the Strasburg citizens' reward
     Who championed these lost wretches, in the face
     Of King and Kaiser—three against the world,
     Conrad von Winterthur the Burgomaster,
     Deputy Gosse Sturm, and Peter Schwarber,
     Master Mechanic?  These leagued fools essayed
     To stand between the people's sacred wrath,
     And its doomed object.  Well, the Jews, no less,
     Were rooted from the city neck and crop,
     And their three friends degraded from their rank
     I' the city council, glad to save their skins.
     The Jews are foes to God.  Our Holy Father
     Thunders his ban from Rome against all such
     As aid the poisoners.  Your oath to God,
     And to the Prince enjoins—Death to the Jews.

     A BURGHER (REINHARD ROLAPP).
     Why all this vain debate?  The Landgrave's brief
     Affirms the Jews fling poison in the wells.
     Shall we stand by and leave them unmolested,
     Till they have made our town a wilderness?
     I say, Death to the Jews!

     A BURGHER (HUGO SCHULTZ).
               My lord and brethren,
     I have scant gift of speech, ye are all my elders.
     Yet hear me for truth's sake, and liberty's.
     The Landgrave of Thuringia is our patron,
     True—and our town's imperial Governor,
     But are we not free burghers?  Shall we not
     Debate and act in freedom?  If Lord Schnetzen
     Will force our council with the sword—enough!
     We are not frightened schoolboys crouched beneath
     The master's rod, but men who bear the sword
     As brave as he.  By this grim messenger,
     Send back this devilish missive.  Say to Frederick
     Nordhausen never was enfeoffed to him.
     Prithee, Lord President, bid Henry Schnetzen
     Withdraw awhile, that we may all take counsel,
     According to the hour's necessity,
     As free men, whom nor fear nor favor swerves.

     TETTENBORN.
     Bold youth, you err.  True, Nordhausen is free,
     And God be witness, we for fear or favor,
     Would never shed the blood of innocence.
     But here the Prince condemns the Jews to death
     For capital crime.  Who sees a snake must kill,
     Ere it spit fatal venom.  I, too, say
     Death to the Jews

     ALL.
               Death to the Jews!  God wills it!

     TETTENBORN.
     Give me your voices in the urn.
     (The votes are taken.)     One voice
     For mercy, all the rest for death.  (To an Usher.)
               Go thou
     To the Jews' quarter; bid Susskind von Orb,
     And Rabbi Jacob hither to the Senate,
     To hear the Landgrave's and the town's decree.
     [Exit Usher.]
     (To Schnetzen.)  What learn you of this evil through the State?

     SCHNETZEN.
     It swells to monstrous bulk.  In many towns,
     Folk build high ramparts round the wells and springs.
     In some they shun the treacherous sparkling brooks,
     To drink dull rain-water, or melted snow,
     In mountain districts.  Frederick has been patient,
     And too long clement, duped by fleece-cloaked wolves.
     But now his subjects' clamor rouses him
     To front the general peril.  As I hear,
     A fiendish and far-reaching plot involves
     All Christian thrones and peoples.  These vile vermin,
     Burrowing underneath society,
     Have leagued with Moors in Spain, with heretics
     Too plentiful—Christ knows! in every land,
     And planned a subterraneous, sinuous scheme,
     To overthrow all Christendom.  But see,
     Where with audacious brows, and steadfast mien,
     They enter, bold as innocence.  Now listen,
     For we shall hear brave falsehoods.

       Enter SUSSKIND VON ORB and RABBI JACOB.

     TETTENBORN.
               Rabbi Jacob,
     And thou, Susskind von Orb, bow down, and learn
     The Council's pleasure.  You the least despised
     By true believers, and most reverenced
     By your own tribe, we grace with our free leave
     To enter, yea, to lift your voices here,
     Amid these wise and honorable men,
     If ye find aught to plead, that mitigates
     The just severity of your doom.  Our prince,
     Frederick the Grave, Patron of Nordhausen,
     Ordains that all the Jews within his lands,
     For the foul crime of poisoning the wells,
     Bringing the Black Death upon Christendom,
     Shall be consumed with flame.

     RABBI JACOB (springing forward and clasping his hands).
               I' the name of God,
     Your God and ours, have mercy!

     SUSSKIND.
               Noble lords,
     Burghers, and artisans of Nordhausen,
     Wise, honorable, just, God-fearing men,
     Shall ye condemn or ever ye have heard?
     Sure, one at least owns here the close, kind name
     Of Brother—unto him I turn.  At least
     Some sit among you who have wedded wives,
     Bear the dear title and the precious charge
     Of Husband—unto these I speak.  Some here,
     Are crowned, it may be, with the sacred name
     Of Father—unto these I pray.  All, all
     Are sons—all have been children, all have known
     The love of parents—unto these I cry:
     Have mercy on us, we are innocent,
     Who are brothers, husbands, fathers, sons as ye!
     Look you, we have dwelt among you many years,
     Led thrifty, peaceable, well-ordered lives.
     Who can attest, who prove we ever wrought
     Or ever did devise the smallest harm,
     Far less this fiendish crime against the State?
     Rather let those arise who owe the Jews
     Some debt of unpaid kindness, profuse alms,
     The Hebrew leech's serviceable skill,
     Who know our patience under injury,
     And ye would see, if all stood bravely forth,
     A motley host, led by the Landgrave's self,
     Recruited from all ranks, and in the rear,
     The humblest, veriest wretch in Nordhausen.
     We know the Black Death is a scourge of God.
     Is not our flesh as capable of pain,
     Our blood as quick envenomed as your own?
     Has the Destroying Angel passed the posts
     Of Jewish doors—to visit Christian homes?
     We all are slaves of one tremendous Hour.
     We drink the waters which our enemies say
     We spoil with poison,—we must breathe, as ye,
     The universal air,—we droop, faint, sicken,
     From the same causes to the selfsame end.
     Ye are not strangers to me, though ye wear
     Grim masks to-day—lords, knights and citizens,
     Few do I see whose hand has pressed not mine,
     In cordial greeting.  Dietrich von Tettenborn,
     If at my death my wealth be confiscate
     Unto the State, bethink you, lest she prove
     A harsher creditor than I have been.
     Stout Meister Rolapp, may you never again
     Languish so nigh to death that Simon's art
     Be needed to restore your lusty limbs.
     Good Hugo Schultz—ah! be those blessed tears
     Remembered unto you in Paradise!
     Look there, my lords, one of your council weeps,
     If you be men, why, then an angel sits
     On yonder bench.  You have good cause to weep,
     You who are Christian, and disgraced in that
     Whereof you made your boast.  I have no tears.
     A fiery wrath has scorched their source, a voice
     Shrills through my brain—"Not upon us, on them
     Fall everlasting woe, if this thing be!"

     SCHNETZEN.
     My lords of Nordhausen, shall ye be stunned
     With sounding words?  Behold the serpent's skin,
     Sleek-shining, clear as sunlight; yet his tooth
     Holds deadly poison.  Even as the Jews
     Did nail the Lord of heaven on the Cross,
     So will they murder all his followers,
     When once they have the might.  Beware, beware!

     SUSSKIND.
     So YOU are the accuser, my lord Schnetzen?
     Now I confess, before you I am guilty.
     You are in all this presence, the one man
     Whom any Jew hath wronged—and I that Jew.
     Oh, my offence is grievous; punish me
     With the utmost rigor of the law, for theft
     And violence, whom ye deemed an honest man,
     But leave my tribe unharmed!  I yield my hands
     Unto your chains, my body to your fires;
     Let one life serve for all.

     SCHNETZEN.
               You hear, my lords,
     How the prevaricating villain shrinks
     From the absolute truth, yet dares not front his Maker
     With the full damnable lie hot on his lips.
     Not thou alone, my private foe, shalt die,
     But all thy race.  Thee had my vengeance reached,
     Without appeal to Prince or citizen.
     Silence! my heart is cuirassed as my breast.

     RABBI JACOB.
     Bear with us, gracious lords!  My friend is stunned.
     He is an honest man.  Even I, as 't were,
     Am stupefied by this surprising news.
     Yet, let me think—it seems it is not new,
     This is an ancient, well-remembered pain.
     What, brother, came not one who prophesied
     This should betide exactly as it doth?
     That was a shrewd old man!  Your pardon, lords,
     I think you know not just what you would do.
     You say the Jews shall burn—shall burn you say;
     Why, good my lords, the Jews are not a flock
     Of gallows-birds, they are a colony
     Of kindly, virtuous folk.  Come home with me;
     I'll show you happy hearths, glad roofs, pure lives.
     Why, some of them are little quick-eyed boys,
     Some, pretty, ungrown maidens—children's children
     Of those who called me to the pastorate.
     And some are beautiful tall girls, some, youths
     Of marvellous promise, some are old and sick,
     Amongst them there be mothers, infants, brides,
     Just like your Christian people, for all the world.
     Know ye what burning is?  Hath one of you
     Scorched ever his soft flesh, or singed his beard,
     His hair, his eyebrows—felt the keen, fierce nip
     Of the pungent flame—and raises not his voice
     To stop this holocaust?  God! 't is too horrible!
     Wake me, my friends, from this terrific dream.

     SUSSKIND.
     Courage, my brother.  On our firmness hangs
     The dignity of Israel.  Sir Governor,
     I have a secret word to speak with you.

     SCHNETZEN.
     Ye shall enjoy with me the jest.  These knaves
     Are apt to quick invention as in crime.
     Speak out—I have no secrets from my peers.

     SUSSKIND.
     My lord, what answer would you give your Christ
     If peradventure, in this general doom
     You sacrifice a Christian?  Some strayed dove
     Lost from your cote, among our vultures caged?
     Beware, for midst our virgins there is one
     Owes kinship nor allegiance to our tribe.
     For her dear sake be pitiful, my lords,
     Have mercy on our women!  Spare at least
     My daughter Liebhaid, she is none of mine!
     She is a Christian!

     SCHNETZEN.
               Just as I foretold!
     The wretches will forswear the sacred'st ties,
     Cringing for life.  Serpents, ye all shall die.
     So wills the Landgrave; so the court affirms.
     Your daughter shall be first, whose wanton arts
     Have brought destruction on a princely house.

     SUSSKIND.
     My lord, be moved.  You kill your flesh and blood.
     By Adonai I swear, your dying wife
     Entrusted to these arms her child.  'T was I
     Carried your infant from your burning home.
     Lord Schnetzen, will you murder your own child?

     SCHNETZEN.
     Ha, excellent!  I was awaiting this.
     Thou wilt inoculate our knightly veins
     With thy corrupted Jewish blood.  Thou 'lt foist
     This adder on my bosom.  Henry Schnetzen
     Is no weak dupe, whom every lie may start.
     Make ready, Jew, for death—and warn thy tribe.