Concerning Halevi’s ideal of love and marriage we may speak at greater length; and on these subjects one may remark that our poet’s ideal was less individual than national. Mixing intimately among men who, as a matter of course, bestowed their fickle favours on several wives, and whose poetic notion of matrimony--on the prosaic we will not touch--was a houri-peopled Paradise, it is perhaps to the credit of the Jews that this was one of the Arabian customs which, with all their susceptibility, they were very slow to adopt. Halevi, as is the general faithful fashion of his race, all his life long loved one only, and clave to her--a ‘dove of rarest worth, and sweet exceedingly,’ as in one of his poems he declares her to be. The test of poetry, Goethe somewhere says, is the substance which remains when the poetry is reduced to prose. When the poetry has been yet further reduced by successive processes of translation, the test becomes severe. We fancy, though, that there is still some considerable residuum about Halevi’s songs to his old-fashioned love--his Ophrah, as he calls her in some of them. Here is one when they are likely to be parted for a while:-- ‘So we must be divided; sweetest, stay, Once more, mine eyes would seek thy glance’s light. At night I shall recall thee: Thou, I pray, Be mindful of the days of our delight. Come to me in my dreams, I ask of thee, And even in my dreams be gentle unto me. ‘If thou shouldst send me greeting in the grave, The cold breath of the grave itself were sweet; Oh, take my life, my life, ’tis all I have, If it should make thee live, I do entreat. I think that I shall hear when I am dead, The rustle of thy gown, thy footsteps overhead.’(1) And another, which reads like a marriage hymn:-- ‘A dove of rarest worth And sweet exceedingly; Alas, why does she turn And fly so far from me? In my fond heart a tent, Should aye preparèd be. My poor heart she has caught With magic spells and wiles. I do not sigh for gold, But for her mouth that smiles; Her hue it is so bright, She half makes blind my sight, * * * * * The day at last is here Fill’d full of love’s sweet fire; The twain shall soon be one, Shall stay their fond desire. Ah! would my tribe could chance On such deliverance.’(1)