Awestruck Ben Isaac stood. The desert wind
Blew his long mantle backward, laying bare
The mournful secret of his shirt of hair.
“I too, O friend, if not in act,” he said,
“In thought have verily sinned. Hast thou
not read,
’Better the eye should see than that desire
Should wander?’ Burning with a hidden fire
That tears and prayers quench not, I come to thee
For pity and for help, as thou to me.
Pray for me, O my friend!” But Nathan cried,
“Pray thou for me, Ben Isaac!”
Side by side
In the low sunshine by the turban stone
They knelt; each made his brother’s woe his
own,
Forgetting, in the agony and stress
Of pitying love, his claim of selfishness;
Peace, for his friend besought, his own became;
His prayers were answered in another’s name;
And, when at last they rose up to embrace,
Each saw God’s pardon in his brother’s
face!
Long after, when his headstone gathered moss, Traced
on the targum-marge of Onkelos In Rabbi Nathan’s
hand these words were read: “Hope not
the cure of sin till Self is dead; Forget it in love’s
service, and the debt Thou, canst not pay the angels
shall forget; Heaven’s gate is shut to him who
comes alone; Save thou a soul, and it shall save thy
own!” 1868.
Norembega, or Norimbegue, is the name given by early
French fishermen and explorers to a fabulous country
south of Cape Breton, first discovered by Verrazzani
in 1524. It was supposed to have a magnificent
city of the same name on a great river, probably the
Penobscot. The site of this barbaric city is
laid down on a map published at Antwerp in 1570.
In 1604 Champlain sailed in search of the Northern
Eldorado, twenty-two leagues up the Penobscot from
the Isle Haute. He supposed the river to be that
of Norembega, but wisely came to the conclusion that
those travellers who told of the great city had never
seen it. He saw no evidences of anything like
civilization, but mentions the finding of a cross,
very old and mossy, in the woods.
The winding way the serpent takes
The mystic water took,
From where, to count its beaded lakes,
The forest sped its brook.
A narrow space ’twixt shore and shore,
For sun or stars to fall,
While evermore, behind, before,
Closed in the forest wall.
The dim wood hiding underneath
Wan flowers without a name;
Life tangled with decay and death,
League after league the same.
Unbroken over swamp and hill
The rounding shadow lay,
Save where the river cut at will
A pathway to the day.
Beside that track of air and light,
Weak as a child unweaned,
At shut of day a Christian knight
Upon his henchman leaned.
The embers of the sunset’s fires
Along the clouds burned down;
“I see,” he said, “the domes and
spires
Of Norembega town.”
