ore his
journey's end? Legend which has beautified his life has transfigured his
death. It is said, that struck by a Saracen's horse Yehuda Halevi sank
down before the very gates of Jerusalem. With its towers and battlements
in sight, and his inspired "Lay of Zion" on his lips, his pure soul
winged its flight heavenward.

With the death of Yehuda Halevi, the golden age of neo-Hebraic poetry in
Spain came to an end, and the period of the epigones was inaugurated. A
note of hesitancy is discernible in their productions, and they
acknowledge the superiority of their predecessors in the epithet
"fathers of song" applied to them. The most noted of the later writers
was Yehuda ben Solomon Charisi. Fortune marked him out to be the critic
of the great poetic creations of the brilliant epoch just closed, and
his fame rests upon the skill with which he acquitted himself of his
difficult task. As for his poetry, it lacks the depth, the glow, the
virility, and inspiration of the works of the classical period. He was a
restless wanderer, a poet tramp, roving in the Orient, in Africa, and in
Europe. His most important work is his divan _Tachkemoni_, testifying to
his powers as a humorist, and especially to his mastery of the Hebrew
language, which he uses with dexterity never excelled. The divan touches
upon every possible subject: God and nature, human life and suffering,
the relations between men, his personal experiences, and his adventures
in foreign parts. The first Makamat[50] writer among Jews, he furnished
the model for all poems of the kind that followed; their first genuine
humorist, he flashes forth his wit like a stream of light suddenly
turned on in the dark. That he measured the worth of his productions by
the generous meed of praise given by his contemporaries is a venial
offense in the time of the troubadours and minnesingers. Charisi was
particularly happy in his use of the "mosaic" style, and his short poems
and epigrams are most charming. Deep melancholy is a foil to his humor,
but as often his writings are disfigured by levity. The following may
serve as samples of his versatile muse. The first is addressed to his
grey hair:

"Those ravens black that rested
Erstwhile upon my head,
Within my heart have nested,
Since from my hair they fled."

The second is inscribed to love's tears:

"Within my heart I held concealed
My love so tender and so true;
But overflowing tears reveal