Then, from the stony peak there rang A blast to ope the graves: down poured The Maccabean clan, who sang Their battle-anthem to the Lord. Five heroes lead, and following, see Ten thousand rush to victory! Oh for Jerusalem’s trumpet now, To blow a blast of shattering power, To wake the sleepers high and low, And rouse them to the urgent hour! No hand for vengeance--but to save, A thousand naked swords should wave. O deem not dead that martial fire, Say not the mystic flame is spent! With Moses’ law and David’s lyre, Your ancient strength remains unbent. Let but an Ezra rise anew, To lift the _Banner of the Jew_! A rag, a mock at first--erelong When men have bled and women wept, To guard its precious folds from wrong, Even they who shrunk, even they who slept, Shall leap to bless it, and to save. Strike! for the brave revere the brave! This is bold and moving, but the reader cannot fail to observe that the metre and the passion are derived from Byron’s _Isles of Greece_. The Hebrew’s protest _against_ Greece must, forsooth, owe its form and sentiment to the Saxon’s plea _for_ Greece! The Jewish muse is still in leading strings. The true, full song of Israel’s hope is yet to come. None the less, the genius of Emma Lazarus struck truly the key-note to that song. We hear its echo still. CONDER’S “TENT WORK IN PALESTINE” He used the Bible too much to please some of the continentals. Compare, for instance, Gautier with Conder. The Frenchman employed the Bible to illustrate the country, the Englishman the country to illustrate the Bible. Which procedure is preferable? The answer is another question. Why does every inch of Palestine interest the modern explorer? No Parthenon is to be seen within its boundaries, no Sphinx. Neither is the Attic beautiful there to charm, nor the Egyptian colossal to provide a thrill. When Thomson (in 1859) called his work “The Land and the Book,” he put the seal on the English way of regarding the relation between the geography and the history of the Holy Land. Englishmen have been among the keenest geographers of Palestine because they respond best to its history.