“If, Jerusalem, I ever “Should forget thee, let my tongue “To my mouth’s roof cleave, let also “My right hand forget her cunning--” Words and melody are whirling In my head to-day unceasing, And methinks I hear sweet voices Singing psalms, sweet human voices. Often to the light come also Beards of shadowy-long proportions; Say, ye phantoms, which amongst you Is Jehuda ben Halevy? But they quickly hustle by me; Spirits ever shun with terror Exhortations of the living-- But I recognized him well. Well I knew him by his pallid, Haughty, high, and thoughtful forehead, By his eyes so sweetly staring, Viewing me with piercing sorrow. But I recognized him mostly By the enigmatic smile which O’er his fair rhymed lips was playing, Such as none but poets boast of. Years come on and years pass swiftly Since Jehuda ben Halevy Had his birth, have seven hundred Years and fifty fleeted o’er us. At Toledo in Castile he For the first time saw the light, And the golden Tagus lull’d him In his cradle with its music. His strict father the unfolding Of his intellect full early Cared for, and began his lessons With the book of God, the Thora. With his son he read this volume In the’ original, whose beauteous Picturesque and hieroglyphic Old Chaldean quarto pages Spring from out the childish ages Of our world, and for that reason Smile so trustingly and sweetly On each childlike disposition. And this genuine ancient text By the boy was likewise chanted In the ancient and establish’d Sing-song fashion, known as Tropp. And melodiously he gurgled Those fat oily gutturals; Like a very bird he warbled That fine quaver, the Schalscheleth. And the Targum Onkelos, Which is written in the idiom, The low-Hebrew sounding idiom That we call the Aramæan, And that to the prophet’s language Has about the same relation As the Swabian to the German,-- In this bastard Hebrew likewise Was the youth betimes instructed And the knowledge thus acquired Proved extremely useful to him In the study of the Talmud. Yes, full early did his father Lead him onward to the Talmud And he then unfolded to him The Halacha, that illustrious Fighting school, where the expertest Dialectic athletes both of Babylon and Pumpeditha Carry on their mental combats. Here the boy could gain instruction In the arts, too, of polemics; Later, in the book Cosari Was his mastership establish’d. Yet the heavens pour down upon us Lights of two distinct descriptions: Glaring daylight of the sun, And the moonlight’s softer lustre. Thus two different lights the Talmud Also sheds, and is divided In Halacha and Hagada.-- Now the first’s a fighting school,