Fighting school, where the expertest
Dialectic athletes both of
Babylon and Pumpeditha
Carry on their mental combats.
Here the boy could gain instruction
In the arts, too, of polemics;
Later, in the book Cosari
Was his mastership establish’d.
Yet the heavens pour down upon us
Lights of two distinct descriptions:
Glaring daylight of the sun,
And the moonlight’s softer lustre.
Thus two different lights the Talmud
Also sheds, and is divided
In Halacha and Hagada.—
Now the first’s a fighting school,
But the latter, the Hagada,
I should rather call a garden,
Yes, a garden, most fantastic,
Comparable to that other,
Which in days of yore was planted
In the town of Babylon,—
Great Semiramis’s garden,
That eighth wonder of the world.
’Tis said queen Semiramis,
Who had, when a child, been brought up
By the birds, and had contracted
Many a bird’s peculiar custom,
On the mere flat ground would never
Promenade, as human creatures
Mostly do, and so she planted
In the air a hanging garden.
High upon colossal pillars
Palms and cypresses were standing,
Golden oranges, fair flow’r-beds,
Marble statues, gushing fountains,—
Firmly, skilfully united
By unnumber’d hanging bridges
Which appear’d like climbing plants,
And whereon the birds were rocking,—