Chapter XXV: Mazeltov

O! sweet is your forgiveness, Dear, to me,
How sweet I think and think and cannot tell;
If Love’s a great, great thirst it is the well
Where I, a desert wanderer, drink gladly;
But if it’s health and life lived brave and free,
It is as pure white lilies that for a spell
Cool fever’s brow and of green meadows tell—
Such, Dear, has your forgiveness been to me.

And then the little word with which it came,
The Hebrew “_mazeltov_”—To you joy’s flame!
I hug it to my heart as they of yore
Who heard it, perchance, by the palace door
Of one who gloried in proud Babylon
And learned of love beneath a younger sun.