At Toledo in Castile
First he saw the light of heaven,
And the golden Tagus lulled him
In his cradle with its music.
The unfolding of his powers
Intellectual was fostered
By his father strict, who taught him
First the book of God, the Thora.
With his son he read the volume
In the ancient text, whose fair,
Picturesque and hieroglyphic,
Old-Chaldean, square-writ letters
From the childhood of our world
Have been handed down, and therefore
Seem familiarly to smile on
All with naive, childlike natures.
And this ancient, uncorrupted
Text the boy recited also
In the Tropp-the sing-song measure,
From primeval times descended.
And the gutturals so oily,
And so fast he gurgled sweetly,
While he shook and trilled and quavered
The Schalscheleth like a bird,
And the boy was learned early
In the Targum Onkelos,
Which is written in low-Hebrew
In the Aramaean idiom,
Bearing somewhat the resemblance
To the language of the prophets
That the Swabian does to German-
In this curious bastard Hebrew,
As we said, the boy was versed,
And ere long he found such knowledge Of most valuable service,
In the study of the Talmud...
Yes, his father led him early
To the Talmud, and threw open
For his benefit that famous
School of fighting the Halacha.
Where the athletes dialectic,
Best in Babylon, and also
Those renowned in Pumbeditha
Did their intellectual tilting.
He had here the chance of learning
Every art and ruse polemic;
How he mastered them was proven
In the book Cosari, later.
But the lights are twain, and differ, That are shed on earth by heaven; There's the harsh and glaring sunlight, And the mild and gentle moonlight.
With a double radiance also
Shines the Talmud; the Halacha
Is the one, and the Hagada
Is the other light. The former
I have called the school of fighting;
But the latter, the Hagada
I will call a curious garden,
Most fantastic, and resembling
Much another one that blossomed
Too in Babylon-the garden
Of Semiramis; 'mongst wonders
Of the world it was the eighth.
Queen Semiramis, whose childhood
With the birds was spent, who reared her,
Many birdlike ways and habits
In her later life retained;
All most cunningly and surely
Bound by countless hanging bridges,
That might well have passed as creepers,
And on which the birds kept swinging-
Birds of many colours, solemn,
Big, contemplative and songless,
While the tiny, happy finches,
Gaily warbling, fluttered round them
All were breathing, blest and happy,
Breathing pure and balmy fragrance,
Unpolluted by the squalid,
Evil colour of the earth.
The Hagada is a garden,
Is just such another whimsy
Of a child of air, and often
Would the youthful Talmud scholar,
When his heart was dazed and dusty.
With the strifes of the Halacha,
With disputes about the fatal
Egg the hen laid on a feast day,·
Or concerning other problems
Of the same profound importance-
He would turn to seek refreshment
In the blossoming Hagada,
Where the beautiful old sagas,
Legends dim, and angel-fables,
Pious stories of the martyrs,
Festal hymns and proverbs wise,
And hyperboles the drollest,
But withal so strong and burning
With belief where all, resplendent,
Welled and sprouted with luxuriance!
And the generous heart and noble
Of the boy was taken captive
By the wild romantic sweetness,
By the wondrous aching rapture,
By the weird and fabled terrors
Of that blissful secret world,
Of that mighty revelation
For which poetry our name is.
And the art that goes to make it,
Gracious power, happy knowledge,
Which we call the art poetic,
To his understanding opened..
And Jehuda ben Halevy
Was not only scribe and scholar,
But of poetry a master,
Was himself a famous poet;
Yes, a great and famous poet,
Star and torch to guide his time,
Light and beacon of his nation;
Was a wonderful and mighty
Fiery pillar of sweet song,
Moving on in front of Israel's
Caravans of woe and mourning
In the wilderness of exile.
True and pure and without blemish
Was his singing, like his soul-
The Creator having made it,
With His handiwork contented,
Kissed the lovely soul, and echoes
Of that kiss forever after
Thrilled through all the poet's numbers,
By that gracious deed inspired.
As in life, in song the highest
Good of all is simply grace,
And who hath it cannot sin in
Either poetry or prose.
And that man we call a genius,
By the grace of God a poet,
Monarch absolute, unquestioned,
In the realm of human thought.
None but God can call the poet
To account, the people never-
As in art, in life the people.
Can but kill, they cannot judge us.
HEINRICH HEINE.
(Translated by Margaret Armour.)
IMPASSIONED hours, when Hebrew was the key
To sweetest rivalries 'twixt man and man.
And poets sat enthroned amidst a clan
Of choristers divine. How blithesomely
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