Song of the Spirit, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1848)

Contributor(s):

Rosa Emma Salaman and Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

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3 August 2017 under the Creative Commons Zero (CC 0) Universal license a Public Domain dedication

Categories:

Mourning

Tags:

57th century A.M., British Jewry, Anglo Jewry, English Romanticism, Grief, Prayers as poems, neshamah, אלהי נשמה Elohai neshamah, 19th century C.E., mourning

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Contribute a translation	Source (English)
	SONG OF THE SPIRIT.
	Come, sweet sister, come away, Oh! leave your tenement of clay, And let not all your love be wasted, While heavenly bliss remains untasted.
	I’ve watched you all your life on earth, E’en from the moment of your birth, ’Tis I that give to all you see That colouring so heavenly, ’Tis I that whisper in your ear The music of another sphere; I float about your path by day, I give to all you think or say, A tenderness and love, which now With grief I trace upon that brow. ’Tis I who hover all the night Around your bed till morning’s light, And give your dreams a holier dye Than can be seen by mortal eye.
	Now raise your thoughts from earth to heaven, And think upon the bliss that’s given; Think of the spirits’ power who raise Their voices day and night in praise; In strains angelical they sing The wonders of th’ Eternal King. They fly at their Creator’s call, Then low in adoration fall.
	Now bid all earthly cares adieu, All earthly pain, and pleasure too, And tread with me that azure sky On which you gaze so wond’ringly; The very air we breathe above, An atmosphere of holy love. Your joy and rapture here below No sympathy can ever know; But there ’tis purified—refined In elements of floating mind; There shall we feed on thought sublime Beyond the ravages of time, And watch and pray o’er those we love, Till every breath a blessing prove; We’ll dwell for ever with the Lord, And thank and praise his name adored. Give glory to His majesty In tones that rend the vaulted sky.

The poem, “Song of the Spirit” by Rosa Emma Salaman, was first published in the Occident 6:7, Tishrei 5609, October 1848, p. 333-334. In her bound collections of poetry, Poems (1853), it is found on pp. 98-100 under a slightly different title, “The Spirit’s Song.”

In contributing her poem to the Occident, Salaman wrote the following,

I send you these lines of mine, as the idea occurred to me that the beautiful figure kneeling on the tomb, with the tearful eyes and hand pointing towards heaven, might be supposed to be listening to the distant song of the spirit, who has ascended unto the regions of bliss.

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“Song of the Spirit, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1848)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Rosa Emma Salaman

Rosa Emma Collins née Salaman (1815-1898), was a poet and translator of Hebrew and German. Poems, published in 1853, was reportedly the only book accepted by Queen Victoria in the year of mourning following Prince Albert's death in 1861. In the United States, her poetry appeared in Isaac Leeser's Occident and American Jewish Advocate. The daughter of Simeon Kensington Salaman (b.1789) and Alice Cowan, Rosa Emma was one of fourteen siblings in a large and literary Jewish family in London, part of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community. Two sisters, Kate Salaman and Julia Goodman, were painters -- the former of miniatures and the latter, a prolific portraitist. Her brother, Charles Kensington Salaman, was a British composer and pianist. Her husband, Judah Julius Collins, was a warden of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London's West End, and purported to be a descendant of the Baal Shem of London. Their son, Edwin Collins, was a Jewish educator.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

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Works of related interest:

The Body Speaking to the Soul Which Just Left It, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1842)

Divine Love, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1848)

A Description of my Dreams, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1848)

The Angels’ Vigil, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1848)

Future Happiness (Rosa Emma Salaman 1853) - cropped

Future Happiness, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1853)

Heaven (Rosa Emma Salaman 1853) - cropped

Heaven, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1853)

Song, a poem by Rosa Emma Salaman (1853)

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ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17