Even before the first blush of dawn, when every one in Russia was yet groaning under the strokes of an autocratic tyranny, which the presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of high-flown Hebrew odes [1]--a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from tuberculosis and _Weltschmerz_. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's _Aeneid_ [2] but soon turned to Jewish _motifs_. In the musical rhymes of the "Songs of the Daughter of Zion" (_Shire bat Zion_, Vilna, 1851), the author poured forth the anguish of his suffering soul, which was torn between faith and science, weighed down by the oppression from without and stirred to its depth by the tragedy of his homeless nation. [3] A cruel disease cut short the poet's life in 1852, at the age of twenty-four. A small collection of lyrical poems, published after his death under the title _Kinnor bat Zion_ ("The Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), exhibited even more brilliantly the wealth of creative energy which was hidden in the soul of this prematurely cut-off youth, who on the brink of the grave sang so touchingly of love, beauty, and the pure joys of life. [Footnote 1: See above, p. 134 et seq.] [Footnote 2: It was made from the German translation of Schiller] [Footnote 3: See the poems "Solomon and Koheleth," "Jael and Sisera," and "Judah ha-Levi."]