The reaction which set in about 1870, after a period of social reforms and unrealized hopes, affected the poet deeply. The government put obstacles in the forward march of the Jews, the masses remained steeped in fanaticism, and the men of light and leading themselves fell short of doing their whole duty. Disillusioned, he cherished no hope of anything. He could not share the optimism of Smolenskin and his school. For an instant he stops to look back over the road travelled. He sees nothing, and in anguish he asks himself: "For whom have I toiled all the years of my prime? "My parents, they cling to the faith and to their people, they think of nothing but business and religious observances all day long; they despise knowledge, and are hostile to good sense.... "Our intellectuals scorn the national language, and all their love is lavished upon the language of the land. "Our daughters, charming as they are, are kept in absolute ignorance of Hebrew.... "And the young generation go on and on, God knows how far and whither ... perhaps to the point whence they will never return." He therefore addresses himself to a handful of the elect, amateurs, the only ones who do not despise the Hebrew poet, but understand him and approve his ways: "To you I bring my genius as a sacrifice, before you I shed my tears as a libation.... Who knows but I am the last to sing of Zion, and you the last to read the Zion songs?" This pessimistic strain recurs in all the later writings of Gordon. Even after the events of 1882, when revived hatred and persecution had thrown the camp of the emancipators into disorder, and the most ardent of the anti-Rabbinic champions, like Lilienblum and Braudes, had been driven to the point of raising the flag of Zionism, Gordon alone of all was not carried along with the current. His skepticism kept him from embracing the illusions of his friends converted to Zionism. All his contempt for the tyrants, and his compassion for his people unjustly oppressed, he puts into his poem _Ahoti Ruhamah_, which is inscribed "to the Honor of the Daughter of Jacob violated by the Son of Hamor." "Why weepest thou, my afflicted sister? "Wherefore this desolation of spirit, this anguish of heart? "If thieves surprised thee and ravished thy honor, if the hand of the malefactor has prevailed against thee, is it thy fault, my afflicted sister? "Whither shall I bear my shame? "Where is thy shame, seeing thy heart is pure and chaste? Arise, display thy wound, that all the world may see the blood of Abel upon the forehead of Cain. Let the world know, my afflicted sister, how thou art tortured! "Not upon thee falls the shame, but upon thy oppressors. "Thy purity has not been sullied by their polluting touch.... Thou art white as snow, my afflicted sister." Almost the poet seems to regret his efforts of other days to bring the Jews close to the Christians.