The peculiar charm of the Haggada is best revealed in its legends and tales, its fables and myths, its apologues and allegories, its riddles and songs. The starting-point of the Haggada usually is some memory of the great past. It entwines and enmeshes in a magic network the lives of the patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs, and clothes with fresh, luxuriant green the old ideals and figures, giving them new life for a remote generation. The teachers of the Haggada allow no opportunity, sad or merry, to pass without utilizing it in the guise of an apologue or parable. Alike for wedding-feasts and funerals, for banquets and days of fasting, the garden of the Haggada is rifled of its fragrant blossoms and luscious fruits. Simplicity, grace, and childlike merriment pervade its fables, yet they are profound, even sublime, in their truth. "Their chief and enduring charm is their fathomless depth, their unassuming loveliness." Poems constructed with great artistic skill do not occur. Here and there a modest bud of lyric poesy shyly raises its head, like the following couplet, describing a celebrated but ill-favored rabbi: "Without charm of form and face. But a mind of rarest grace." Over the grave of the same teacher the Talmud wails: "The Holy Land did beautify what womb of Shinar gave; And now Tiberias' tear-filled eye weeps o'er her treasure's grave." On seeing the dead body of the Patriarch Yehuda, a rabbi laments: "Angels strove to win the testimony's ark. Men they overcame; lo! vanished is the ark!" Another threnody over some prince in the realm of the intellect: "The cedar hath by flames been seized; Can hyssop then be saved? Leviathan with hook was caught; Alas! ye little fish! The deep and mighty stream ran dry, Ah woe! ye shallow brooks!" Nor is humor lacking. "Ah, hamper great, with books well-filled, thou'rt gone!" is a bookworm's eulogy. Poets naturally have not been slow to avail themselves of the material stored in the Haggada. Many of its treasures, tricked out in modern verse, have been given to the world. The following are samples:[16] BIRTH AND DEATH "His hands fast clenched, his fingers firmly clasped, So man this life begins. He claims earth's wealth, and constitutes himself The heir of all her gifts. He thinks his hand may snatch and hold Whatever life doth yield. But when at last the end has come, His hands are open wide, No longer closed. He knoweth now full well, That vain were all his hopes. He humbly says, 'I go, and nothing take Of all my hands have wrought.'" The next, "Interest and Usury," may serve to give the pertinacious opponent of the Talmud a better opinion of its position on financial subjects: