He left us there, went up to Pisgah hill,

And saw the holiday land, the sabbath land,

The mild prophetic beasts, millennial herds,

The sacred lintel, over-arching tree,

The vineyards glittering on the southern slopes,

And in the midst the shining vein of water,

The river turning, turning towards its home.

Promised to us. The dream rose in his nostrils

With homely smell of wine and corn and cattle,

Byre, barn and stall, sweat-sanctified smell of peace.

He raw the tribes arrayed beside the river,—

White robes and sabbath stillness, still light falling

On dark heads whitened by the desert wave,—

The Sabbath of Sabbaths come and Canaan their home.

‘All this hy saw in dreaming. But we who dream

Such common dreams and see so little saw

The battle for the land, the massacres,

The vineyards drenched in aboriginal blood,

The settlement, unsatisfactory order,

The petty wars and neighbouring jealousies

And local troubles. But we did not see,

We did not see and Moses did not see,

The great disaster, exile, diaspora,

The holy bread of the land crumbled and broken

In Babylon, Caesarea, Alexandria

As on a splendid dish, or gnawed as offal.

Nor did we see, beyond, the ghetto rising,

Toledo, Cracow, Vienna, Budapest,

Nor, had we seen, would we have known our people

In the wild disguises of fantastic time,

Packed im dense cities, wandering countless roads,

And not a road in the world to lead them home.

How could we have seen such things? How could we have seen

That plot of ground pledged by the God of Moses

Trampled by sequent tribes, seized and forgotten

As a child seizes and forgets a toy,

Strange languages, strange gods and customs borne

Over it and away with the light migrations,

Stirring each century ancestral dust.

All this was settled while we stood by Jordan

That first great day, could not be otherwise.

Moses saw that day only; we did not see it;

But now it stands becalmed in time for ever:

White robes and sabbath peace, the snow-white emblem.