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:— In vain I labour, all my toil is vain, For never can I boast of riches' gain; The fates have frowned upon me, since my birth, And failure is my portion here on earth. Were I to take the notion in my head To deal in shrouds, the cerements of the dead, Then to establish how ill-starred am I, No man who lives on earth would ever die; Or should I try to make wax-candles pay, The sun would shine by night as well as day^[61-1]. When Ibn Ezra saw that it was impossible for him to earn a livelihood in his native country, he determined to try his fortune abroad. He thus visited Egypt at the time when the famous Maimonides was the physician at the Court of the Sultan Saladin. He made several vain attempts to see him, and in the end he composed the following epigram:— I call on my Lord in the morning, I am told that on horse-back he's sped; I call once again in the evening, And hear that his lordship's abed. But whether his Highness is riding, Or whether my Lord is asleep, I'm perfectly sure, disappointment Is the one single fruit I shall reap^[61-2]. More fortunate as regards worldly possessions was Jehuda Halevi, the most celebrated Hebrew poet since the close of the Hebrew Canon. Born in Toledo, in Spain, about the end of the eleventh century, he received an excellent education, and his genius showed itself very early. Though following the medical profession with conspicuous success, he is chiefly known as the author of some philosophical works and of numerous charming poems in Hebrew. Some of them have been made familiar to the literary world by Heinrich Heine, who speaks of their author as follows:—“When his soul was on the point of leaving heaven, she was kissed by the Creator. This kiss re-echoed afterwards in the poet's mind, and vibrated in all the poetical offsprings of his genius.” Particularly fine is the sacred song which Jehuda Halevi composed under the title of “An Ode to Zion,” a condensed version of which in prose runs somewhat as follows:—