As in life, in numbers also Grace is greatest good of all; He who has it, ne’er transgresses In his prose or in his verses. Genius call we such a poet Of the mighty grace of God; He is undisputed monarch Of the boundless realms of fancy. He to God alone accounteth, Not to man, and, as in lifetime, So in art the mob have power To destroy, but not to judge us. 2. “By the streams of Babylon “Sat we down and wept, we hangèd “Our sad harps upon the willows--” Know’st thou not the olden song? Know’st thou not the olden tune, Which begins with elegiac Crying, humming like a kettle That upon the hearth is boiling? Long has it been boiling in me, Thousand years. A gloomy anguish And my wounds are lick’d by time, As Job’s boils by dogs were lickèd. Thank thee, dog, for thy saliva,-- Though it can but cool and soften-- Death alone can ever heal me, But, alas, I am immortal! Years come round and years then vanish-- Busily the spool is humming As it in the loom is moving,-- What it weaves, no weaver knoweth. Years come round and years then vanish, Human tears are dripping, running On the earth, and then the earth Sucks them in with eager silence. Seething mad! The cover leaps up-- “Happy he whose daring hand “Taketh up thy little ones, “Dashing them against the stones.” God be praised! the seething slowly In the pot evaporates, Then is mute. My spleen is soften’d, My west-eastern darksome spleen. And my Pegasus is neighing Once more gaily, and the nightmare Seems to shake with vigour off him, And his wise eyes thus are asking: Are we riding back to Spain, To the little Talmudist there, Who was such a first-rate poet,-- To Jehuda ben Halevy? Yes, he was a first-rate poet, In the realm of dreams sole ruler With the spirit-monarch’s crown, By the grace of God a poet, Who in all his sacred metres, In his madrigals, terzinas, Canzonets, and strange ghaselas Pour’d out all the’ abundant fire Of his noble god-kiss’d spirit! Of a truth this troubadour Was upon a par with all the Best lute-players of Provence, Of Poitou and of Guienne, Roussillon and every other Charming orange-growing region Of gallant old Christendom. Charming orange-growing regions Of gallant old Christendom! How they glitter, smell, and tingle In the twilight of remembrance! Beauteous world of nightingales! Where we only in the place of The true God, the false God worshipp’d Of the Muses and of love. Clergy, bearing wreaths of roses On their bald pates, sang the psalms In the charming langue d’oc; Laity, all gallant knights,