How sing the Lord's Song in so strange a Land?
A torrid waste of water-mocking sand;
Oases of wild grapes;
A dull, malodorous fog
O'er a once Sacred River's wandering strand,
Its ancient tillage all gone back to bog;
A busy synod of blest cats and apes
Exposing the poor trick of earth and star
With worshipp'd snouts oracular;
Prophets to whose blind stare
The heavens the glory of God do not declare,
Skill'd in such question nice
As why one conjures toads who fails with lice,
And hatching snakes from sticks in such a swarm
As quite to surfeit Aaron's bigger worm;
A nation which has got
A lie in her right hand,
And knows it not;
With Pharaohs to her mind, each drifting as a log
Which way the foul stream flows,
More harden'd the more plagued with fly and frog!
How should sad Exile sing in such a Land?
How should ye understand?
What could he win but jeers,
Or howls, such as sweet music draws from dog,
Who told of marriage-feasting to the man
That nothing knows of food but bread of bran?
Besides, if aught such ears
Might e'er unclog,
There lives but one, with tones for Sion meet.
Behoveful, zealous, beautiful, elect,
Mild, firm, judicious, loving, bold, discreet,
Without superfluousness, without defect,
Few are his words, and find but scant respect,
Nay, scorn from some, for God's good cause agog.
Silence in such a Land is oftenest such men's speech.
O, that I might his holy secret reach;
O, might I catch his mantle when he goes;
O, that I were so gentle and so sweet,
So I might deal fair Sion's foolish foes
Such blows!