At an age when other men still indulge in the frivolities of youth, Ibn-Gebirol was a finished poet, outshining all his predecessors. His poems show that words and rhymes, thoughts and metaphors, readily and exuberantly came to him. He improved the Hebrew meter and softened its tones. The poetic muse, which had been personified neither in Biblical nor in neo-Hebraic poetry, he depicted as a dove with golden wings and a sweet voice. In his desolation and distress the young poet found a comforter and protector in a man whom his poems have immortalized. Yekutiel Ibn-Hassan or Alhassan appears to have had a high position in Saragossa, under King Yachya Ibn-Mondhir, similar to that held by Samuel Ibn-Nagrela in Granada. This distinguished man kindly protected the desolate poet, supported him and soothed him with his friendship. Ibn-Gebirol poured forth the praises of his patron, under whose protection his heart was taught a more cheerful philosophy of life. At this time his muse sang the praises of his patrons and friends, and his pictures of nature are bright, graphic and spirited. But fate did not long permit him to enjoy these privileges, and before he had begun to feel the joy of living, his protector was snatched away from him. Abdallah Ibn-Hakam plotted against the king, his cousin, attacked and murdered him in his palace, and took possession of the treasures. The king's favorites were not spared by the conspirators, and Yekutiel Ibn-Alhassan was imprisoned and afterwards killed. Northern Spain was plunged into grief over the tragic end of the well-beloved Yekutiel. Ibn-Gebirol's grief was without bounds, and his elegy on his benefactor is touching, withal a model of lofty poetry. The poem numbers more than two hundred verses, and is a memorial both of the departed and of the poet. Ibn-Gebirol again fell a prey to melancholy after this incident, and his poetry henceforth reflects the gloom in which his mind was shrouded. But what would have borne down another, stimulated him to fresh flights, and he now approached the summit of his poetic and literary greatness. Versifying was so easy to him that in his nineteenth year (1040) he wrote a Hebrew grammar with all its dry rules in four hundred verses, hampering himself, moreover, by acrostic tricks, and the repetition of the same rhyme throughout (Anak). In the introduction to this poem Ibn-Gebirol describes the holy language as one favored by God, "in which the angel choirs daily praise their Creator, in which God revealed the Sinaitic Law, the prophets prophesied and the psalmists sung." He blamed his countrymen, the men of Saragossa, the blind community, for their indifference to pure Hebrew. "Some speak Idumæan (Romance), and some the language of Kedar" (Arabic). His versified Hebrew Grammar was intended to awaken love for the language of the Bible, and at the same time to teach the laws of the language.