In Exile.

"Since that day till now our life is one unbroken paradise. We live a true brotherly life. Every evening after supper we take a seat under the mighty oak and sing our songs." - Extract from a letter of a Russian refugee in Texas.     Twilight is here, soft breezes bow the grass,     Day's sounds of various toil break slowly off,     The yoke-freed oxen low, the patient ass     Dips his dry nostril in the cool, deep trough.     Up from the prairie the tanned herdsmen pass     With frothy pails, guiding with voices rough     Their udder-lightened kine. Fresh smells of earth,     The rich, black furrows of the glebe send forth.     After the Southern day of heavy toil,     How good to lie, with limbs relaxed, brows bare     To evening's fan, and watch the smoke-wreaths coil     Up from one's pipe-stem through the rayless air.     So deem these unused tillers of the soil,     Who stretched beneath the shadowing oak tree, stare     Peacefully on the star-unfolding skies,     And name their life unbroken paradise.     The hounded stag that has escaped the pack,     And pants at ease within a thick-leaved dell;     The unimprisoned bird that finds the track     Through sun-bathed space, to where his fellows dwell;     The martyr, granted respite from the rack,     The death-doomed victim pardoned from his cell, -     Such only know the joy these exiles gain, -     Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.     Strange faces theirs, wherethrough the Orient sun     Gleams from the eyes and glows athwart the skin.     Grave lines of studious thought and purpose run     From curl-crowned forehead to dark-bearded chin.     And over all the seal is stamped thereon     Of anguish branded by a world of sin,     In fire and blood through ages on their name,     Their seal of glory and the Gentiles' shame.     Freedom to love the law that Moses brought,     To sing the songs of David, and to think     The thoughts Gabirol to Spinoza taught,     Freedom to dig the common earth, to drink     The universal air - for this they sought     Refuge o'er wave and continent, to link     Egypt with Texas in their mystic chain,     And truth's perpetual lamp forbid to wane.     Hark! through the quiet evening air, their song     Floats forth with wild sweet rhythm and glad refrain.     They sing the conquest of the spirit strong,     The soul that wrests the victory from pain;     The noble joys of manhood that belong     To comrades and to brothers. In their strain     Rustle of palms and Eastern streams one hears,     And the broad prairie melts in mist of tears.