the catastrophe ! In place of the personal we have the drama of the universal. Love is only a flash now, a dream caught sight of and at
once renounced at a higher claim.
" Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid?
Why should you tremble?
Prince, I am afraid!
Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy,
A blasphemy against my father s grief,
My people s agony!
" What good shall come, forswearing kith and God,
To follow the allurements of the heart? "
asks the distracted maiden, torn between her love for her princely wooer and her devotion to the people among whom her lot has been cast.
"O God!
How shall I pray for strength to love him less
Than mine own 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."
Individuals perish, but great ideas survive,—fortitude and courage, and that exalted loyalty and devotion to principle which alone are worth living and dying for.
The Jews pass by in procession—men, women, and children—on their way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the
