Let us, too, like them, croak a paean in praise
Of water, dear water.
V
Long, long may our host here with main and with might
By night and by day for his temperance fight,
And may he and his line find it writ in the law
That their business in life will be ever to draw
Water, pure water[[60-1]].
Gabirol died when he was only about thirty years of age. It is said that a Moor, who fancied himself to be a great poet, being jealous of Gabirol's success, which he was unable to equal, invited him to his house on a dark night and put him to death.
Abraham Ibn Ezra (1088–1167) achieved a certain amount of fame because of the genuine humour which characterized both his prose and verse. Like so many other men of genius, Ibn Ezra had all his life been in very straitened circumstances, but he never permitted his ill-fortune or disappointments to interfere with his natural cheerfulness. His is the courage which laughs at misfortunes. Thus he writes:—