2.
“By the streams of Babylon
“Sat we down and wept, we hangèd
“Our sad harps upon the willows—”
Know’st thou not the olden song?
Know’st thou not the olden tune,
Which begins with elegiac
Crying, humming like a kettle
That upon the hearth is boiling?
Long has it been boiling in me,
Thousand years. A gloomy anguish
And my wounds are lick’d by time,
As Job’s boils by dogs were lickèd.
Thank thee, dog, for thy saliva,—
Though it can but cool and soften—
Death alone can ever heal me,
But, alas, I am immortal!
Years come round and years then vanish—
Busily the spool is humming
As it in the loom is moving,—
What it weaves, no weaver knoweth.
Years come round and years then vanish,
Human tears are dripping, running
On the earth, and then the earth
Sucks them in with eager silence.
Seething mad! The cover leaps up—
“Happy he whose daring hand
“Taketh up thy little ones,
“Dashing them against the stones.”
God be praised! the seething slowly
In the pot evaporates,
Then is mute. My spleen is soften’d,
My west-eastern darksome spleen.
And my Pegasus is neighing
Once more gaily, and the nightmare
Seems to shake with vigour off him,
And his wise eyes thus are asking:
Are we riding back to Spain,
To the little Talmudist there,
Who was such a first-rate poet,—
To Jehuda ben Halevy?
Yes, he was a first-rate poet,
In the realm of dreams sole ruler
With the spirit-monarch’s crown,
By the grace of God a poet,
Who in all his sacred metres,
In his madrigals, terzinas,
Canzonets, and strange ghaselas
Pour’d out all the’ abundant fire
Of his noble god-kiss’d spirit!
Of a truth this troubadour
Was upon a par with all the
Best lute-players of Provence,
Of Poitou and of Guienne,
Roussillon and every other
Charming orange-growing region
Of gallant old Christendom.
Charming orange-growing regions
Of gallant old Christendom!
How they glitter, smell, and tingle
In the twilight of remembrance!
Beauteous world of nightingales!
Where we only in the place of
The true God, the false God worshipp’d
Of the Muses and of love.
Clergy, bearing wreaths of roses
On their bald pates, sang the psalms
In the charming langue d’oc;
Laity, all gallant knights,
On their high steeds proudly trotting,
Verse and rhyme were ever making
To the honour of the ladies
Whom their hearts to serve delighted.
There’s no love without a lady.
Therefore to a Minnesinger
Was a lady just as needful
As to bread-and-butter, butter.
And the hero, whom we sing of,
Our Jehuda ben Halevy,
Also had his heart’s fair lady;
But she was of special kind.
She no Laura was, whose eyes,
Mortal constellations, kindled
On Good Friday the notorious
Fire within the famed Cathedral;
She was not a chatelaine
Who, attired in youthful graces,
Took the chair at tournaments,
And the laurel wreath presented.
Casuist in the laws of kisses
She was not, no doctrinaire,
Who within the learned college
Of a court of love gave lectures.
She the Rabbi was in love with
Was a poor and mournful loved one,
Woeful image of destruction,
And her name—Jerusalem!
In his early days of childhood
She his one sole love was always;
E’en the word Jerusalem
Made his youthful spirit quiver.
Purple flames were ever standing
On the boy’s cheek, and he hearken’d
When a pilgrim to Toledo
Came from out the far east country,
And recounted how deserted
And uncleanly was the city
Where upon the ground the traces
Of the prophets’ feet still glisten’d;
Where the air is still perfumed
By the’ undying breath of God—
“O the mournful sight!” a pilgrim
Once exclaim’d, whose beard was floating
White as silver, notwithstanding
That the hair which form’d its end
Once again grew black, appearing
As if getting young again.
And a very wondrous pilgrim
Might he be, his eyes were peering
As through centuries of sorrow,
And he sigh’d: “Jerusalem!
“She, the crowded holy city,
“Is converted to a desert,
“Where wood-devils, werewolves, jackals
“Their accursèd home have made.
“Serpents, birds of night, are dwelling
“In its weather-beaten ruins;
“From the window’s airy bow
“Peeps the fox with much contentment.
“Here and there a ragged fellow
“Comes sometimes from out the desert,
“And his hunch-back’d camel feedeth
“In the long grass growing round it.
“On the noble heights of Zion,
“Where stood up the golden fortress
“Whose great majesty bore witness
“To the mighty monarch’s glory,—
“There, with noisome weeds encumber’d,
“Nought now lies but gray old ruins,
“Gazing with such looks of sorrow
“One must fancy they are weeping.
“And ’tis said they wept in earnest,
“Once in each year, on the ninth day
“Of the month’s that known as Ab—
“With my own eyes, full of weeping,
“I the clammy drops have witness’d
“Down the large stones slowly trickling,
“And have heard the broken columns
“Of the temple sadly moaning.”
Such-like pious pilgrim-sayings
Waken’d in the youthful bosom
Of Jehuda ben Halevy
Yearnings for Jerusalem.
Poet’s yearnings! As foreboding,
Visionary, sad, as those
In the Château Blay experienced
Whilome by the noble Vidam,
Messer Geoffroy Rudello,
When the knights, returning homeward
From the Eastern land, asserted
Loudly, as they clash’d their goblets,
That the paragon of graces,
And the flower and pearl of women,
Was the beauteous Melisanda,
Margravine of Tripoli.
Each one knows that for this lady
Raved the troubadour thenceforward;
Her alone he sang, and shortly
Château Blay no more could hold him;
And he hasten’d thence. At Cette
Took he ship, but on the ocean
He fell ill, and sick and dying
He arriv’d at Tripoli.
Here at length, on Melisanda
He, too, gazed with eyes all-loving,
Which that self-same hour were cover’d
By the darksome shades of death.
Singing his last song of love,
He expired before the feet
Of his lady Melisanda,
Margravine of Tripoli.[84]
Wonderful was the resemblance
In the fate of these two poets!
Save that in old age the former
His great pilgrimage commenced.
And Jehuda ben Halevy
At his mistress’ feet expired,
And his dying head, it rested
On Jerusalem’s dear knees.