“By the rivers of Babylon.”
e sat us down and wept,
Where Babel’s waters slept,
And we thought of home and Zion as a long-gone, happy dream;
We hung our harps in air
On the willow-boughs, which there,
Gloomy as round a sepulchre, were drooping o’er the stream.
The foes whose chain we wore,
Were with us on that shore,
Exulting in our tears that told the bitterness of woe.
“Sing us,” they cried aloud,
“Ye once so high and proud,
The songs ye sang in Zion ere we laid her glory low.”
And shall the harp of heaven
To Judah’s monarch given
Be touched by captive fingers, or grace a fettered hand?
