The garden is green and the woodland rejoices:
How cool are the breezes, with fragrance how blent!
But Spring calls not _you_ with her thousand sweet voices!--
With you it is Sfere,--sit still and lament!

The beautiful summer, this life's consolation,
In moaning and sighing glides quickly away.
What hope can it offer to one of my nation?
What joy can he find in the splendors of May?

Bewildered and homeless, of whom whoso passes
May fearlessly stop to make sport at his ease,--
Say, is it for him to seek flowers and grasses,
For him to be thinking on meadows and trees?

And if for a moment, forgetting to ponder
On grief and oppression, song breaks out anew,
I hear in his lay only: "Wander and wander!"
And ev'ry note tells me the singer's a Jew.

A skilful musician, and one who is versed
In metre and measure, whenever he hears
The pitiful song of the Jewish dispersed,
It touches his heart and it moves him to tears.

The blast of the Ram's-horn that quavers and trembles,--
On this, now, alone Jewish fancy is bent.
To grief and contrition its host it assembles,
And causes the stoniest heart to relent.