The Search for Leaven

LIKE a tender, loving maiden

Dusting her devoted room

When her sweetheart she awaiteth,

Often dreaming on her broom.

So when stars beglamour heaven,

And the vesper-prayer’s said,

On the eve before the Seder,

Father takes some feathers, bread,

Rag, and wooden spoon, and taper;

And he breaks the bread in seven,

And like the child with playthings, playing,

He naïvely searches leaven.

First he hides in nook the bread-crumbs,

Then like Jason on the quest

For the glorified golden fleeces,

To the search for leaven, addrest,

By the lighted mystic taper,

He like one a-dreaming prays;

God be blest for sanctifying

Man with leaven-searching ways.

Then he locks the lips in silence,

Like a Bismarck guarding tongue,

Lest the deep-laid scheme of statecraft,

By an ill-timed word go wrong.

And with gravest mien and broodings,

Ferrets out each hiding hole,

Where he laid the treasured bread-crumbs,

Sweeps them to their burning goal,

In the spoon, with tuft and feathers;

Seals it with the rag, and lays

All away until the morrow,

When, ere burning it, he prays:

“All the leaven of my dwelling,

All I saw or did not see,

All I did or didn’t banish,

Void, as dust of earth shall be.”

Then he muses on the Seder,

Like a maid who dusts her room

When her sweetheart she awaiteth,

Often dreaming on the broom.