Ich gēh' arauf auf'n Gass' Derlangt män a Geschrēi: "A Pass, a Pass!" A Pass, a Pass hāb' ich gethān verlieren, Thut män mir in Prijom areinführen. Führt män mir arein in ersten Cheeder, Thut män mir aus mein' Mutters Kleider. Och un' wēh is' mir nischt geschehn, Wās ich hāb' mir nit arumgesehn! Führt män mir arein in andern Cheeder, Thut män mir ān soldatske Klēider. Och un' wēh is' mir nit geschehn, etc. Führt män mir arein in Schul' schwören, Giesst sich vun mir Teichen Trähren. Och un' wēh is mir nit geschehn, etc. Ēhder zu trāgen dem Kēissers Hütel, Besser zu lernen dem Kapitel, Och un' wēh is' mir nit geschehn, etc. Ēhder zu essen dem Kēissers Kasche, Besser zu lernen Chumesch mit Rasche. Och un' wēh is mir nit geschehn, Wās ich hāb' mir nit arumgesehn! I walk in the street,--they cry: "A passport, a passport!" The passport, the passport I have lost. They take me to the enlisting office. They lead me into the first room. They take off the clothes my mother made me. Woe unto me that I have not bethought myself in time!--They lead me into the second room; they put on me a soldier's uniform. Woe unto me, etc.--They lead me into the synagogue to take my oath, and rivers of tears roll down my face. Woe unto me, etc.--Rather than wear the cap of the Czar--to study a chapter of religious lore. Woe unto me, etc.--Rather than eat the Czar's buckwheat mush--to study the Bible with its commentaries. Woe unto me that I have not bethought myself in time! Other soldier songs begin with a detailed farewell to parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, after which follows a recital of the many privations to which the Jewish soldier will be subjected; in all of these, the forced absence from wife or bride is regarded as the greatest evil. The cup of bitterness has never been empty for the Jews that inhabit the present Russian Empire; they had been persecuted by Poland, massacred by the Cossacks, and are now exiled from the central provinces of Russia. Each massacre, each 'pogrom,' has given rise to several poems, in which God is invoked to save them from their cruel tormentors, or in which there are given graphic descriptions of the atrocities perpetrated on the unwary. Like the soldier songs, they vary in form from the chronicle in rhymes to the metrical lyric of modern times. The oldest recorded rhymed chronicle of this kind is the one that tells of the blood bath instituted in the Ukraine in the middle of last century. The simple, unadorned recital of inhumanities concocted by the fertile imagination of a Gonto, a Silo, a Maxim Zhelezniak, produces a more awful effect than any studied poem could do.[43]