The power of _Ha-Tikwah_, as has just been said, arises from its directness. There is no subtlety in its thought, no changes through its nine verses. Just as few ever sing through “God Save the King,” so few sing all the verses of _Ha-Tikwah_. The stanzas tend to become monotonous. They all say the same thing; and it is not surprising that the number of verses is curtailed in some printed editions (thus in Idelsohn five of the nine verses complete the song). The burden of all the verses is identical. The hope of a return to the land of Israel will never die, so long as this or that endures. Each verse adds a this or a that to the count. While myriads of Jews go as pilgrims to the sepulchres of the fathers, while a single eye is left to drop its tear over the ruins of the temple, while the waters of the Jordan swell between its banks and fall with a rush through the sea of Kinnereth, while a drop of blood courses through a Jewish vein, while Israel retains his national aspirations, still may he hope for their fulfilment. Some of these appeals are genuinely pathetic, and the final appeal is magnificent in its strength. Only with the end of the Jews will come the end of the hope. This is the only way to write a popular song. There must be no nuances, but just a confident assertion. Imber supplies exactly that; nothing less, and nothing more. [Illustration: NAPHTALI HERZ IMBER] Nothing more, for the song is not in any sense a declaration of the end. It deals only with the means, making them into an end. Unquenchable, he cries, is the hope of a return; no one has expressed this hope more vigorously and takingly. But what is to be the result of the return? With what ideals are the patriots filled? _Ha-Tikwah_ is silent on these questions. Imber was not qualified to reply to them. He had no depth of spiritual feeling, and though he was capable of inspiriting, he was incapable of inspiring. Hence the absence of all Messianic thought in _Ha-Tikwah_. Compare it, for instance, with _Leka Dodi_; the Friday night hymn is like _Ha-Tikwah_, a song of the return, but, unlike _Ha-Tikwah_, it is Messianic, and is also a song of the rebuilding. When the history of the neo-Zionist movement comes to be written, this fact will undoubtedly come into due prominence: namely, that we have been passing through a phase in which the hope of the return has been divorced from the hope of the rebuilding.