On their high steeds proudly trotting, Verse and rhyme were ever making To the honour of the ladies Whom their hearts to serve delighted. There’s no love without a lady. Therefore to a Minnesinger Was a lady just as needful As to bread-and-butter, butter. And the hero, whom we sing of, Our Jehuda ben Halevy, Also had his heart’s fair lady; But she was of special kind. She no Laura was, whose eyes, Mortal constellations, kindled On Good Friday the notorious Fire within the famed Cathedral; She was not a chatelaine Who, attired in youthful graces, Took the chair at tournaments, And the laurel wreath presented. Casuist in the laws of kisses She was not, no doctrinaire, Who within the learned college Of a court of love gave lectures. She the Rabbi was in love with Was a poor and mournful loved one, Woeful image of destruction, And her name--Jerusalem! In his early days of childhood She his one sole love was always; E’en the word Jerusalem Made his youthful spirit quiver. Purple flames were ever standing On the boy’s cheek, and he hearken’d When a pilgrim to Toledo Came from out the far east country, And recounted how deserted And uncleanly was the city Where upon the ground the traces Of the prophets’ feet still glisten’d; Where the air is still perfumed By the’ undying breath of God-- “O the mournful sight!” a pilgrim Once exclaim’d, whose beard was floating White as silver, notwithstanding That the hair which form’d its end Once again grew black, appearing As if getting young again. And a very wondrous pilgrim Might he be, his eyes were peering As through centuries of sorrow, And he sigh’d: “Jerusalem! “She, the crowded holy city, “Is converted to a desert, “Where wood-devils, werewolves, jackals “Their accursèd home have made. “Serpents, birds of night, are dwelling “In its weather-beaten ruins; “From the window’s airy bow “Peeps the fox with much contentment. “Here and there a ragged fellow “Comes sometimes from out the desert, “And his hunch-back’d camel feedeth “In the long grass growing round it. “On the noble heights of Zion, “Where stood up the golden fortress “Whose great majesty bore witness “To the mighty monarch’s glory,-- “There, with noisome weeds encumber’d, “Nought now lies but gray old ruins, “Gazing with such looks of sorrow “One must fancy they are weeping. “And ’tis said they wept in earnest, “Once in each year, on the ninth day “Of the month’s that known as Ab-- “With my own eyes, full of weeping, “I the clammy drops have witness’d “Down the large stones slowly trickling, “And have heard the broken columns “Of the temple sadly moaning.”