I would return his love with all my might.
Then as his wife, I would live a princess,
Reclining on the softest pillows,
My beauty heightened by velvet, silk, and tulle,
By pearls and golden ornaments,
Which he with lavish love would bring to me,
To add to his delight and mine."

After enumerating additional advantages enjoyed by the gentler sex, the
poet comes to the conclusion that protesting against fate is vain, and
closes his chapter thus:

"Well, then, I'll resign myself to fate,
And seek consolation in the thought that life comes to an end.
Our sages tell us everywhere
That for all things we must praise God,
With loud rejoicing for all good,
In submission for evil fortune.
So I will force my lips,
However they may resist, to say the olden blessing:
My Lord and God accept my thanks
That thou has made of me a man."

One of Kalonymos's friends was Immanuel ben Solomon of Rome, called the
"Heine of the middle ages," and sometimes the "Jewish Voltaire." Neither
comparison is apt. On the one hand, they give him too high a place as a
writer, on the other, they do not adequately indicate his characteristic
qualities. His most important work, the _Mechabberoth_, is a collection
of disjointed pieces, full of bold witticisms, poetic thoughts, and
linguistic charms. It is composed of poems, Makamat, parodies, novels,
epigrams, distichs, and sonnets--all essentially humorous. The poet
presents things as they are, leaving it to reality to create ridiculous
situations. He is witty rather than humorous. Rarely only a spark of
kindliness or the glow of poetry transfigures his wit. He is uniformly
objective, scintillating, cold, often frivolous, and not always chaste.
To produce a comic effect, to make his readers laugh is his sole desire.
Friend and admirer of Dante, he attained to a high degree of skill in
the sonnet. In neo-Hebraic poetry, his works mark the beginning of a new
epoch. Indelicate witticisms and levity, until then sporadic in Jewish
literature, were by him introduced as a regular feature. The poetry of
the earlier writers had dwelt upon the power of love, their muse was
modest and chaste, a "rose of Sharon," a "lily of the valleys."
Immanuel's was of coarser fibre; his witty sallies remind one of Italian
rather than Hebrew models. A recent critic of Hebrew poetry speaks of
his Makamat as a pendant to "Tristan and Isolde,"--in both sensuality