"Hail, beloved halls of my royal Father! Ye tents of Jacob, I kiss with
my lips your holy door-posts!"

Still more he shows us this serious side in his beautiful poem on Jehuda
ben Halevy,[176] a poet belonging to "the great golden age of the
Arabian, Old-Spanish, Jewish school of poets," a contemporary of the
troubadours:--

"He, too,--the hero whom we sing,--Jehuda ben Halevy, too, had his
lady-love; but she was of a special sort.

"She was no Laura,[177] whose eyes, mortal stars, in the cathedral on
Good Friday kindled that world-renowned flame.

"She was no chatelaine, who in the blooming glory of her youth presided
at tourneys, and awarded the victor's crown.

"No casuistess in the Gay Science was she, no lady _doctrinaire_, who
delivered her oracles in the judgment-chamber of a Court of Love.[178]

"She, whom the Rabbi loved, was a woe-begone poor darling, a mourning
picture of desolation ... and her name was Jerusalem."

Jehuda ben Halevy, like the Crusaders, makes his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem; and there, amid the ruins, sings a song of Sion which has
become famous among his people:--

"That lay of pearled tears is the wide-famed Lament, which is sung in
all the scattered tents of Jacob throughout the world.

"On the ninth day of the month which is called Ab, on the anniversary of
Jerusalem's destruction by Titus Vespasianus.

"Yes, that is the song of Sion, which Jehuda ben Halevy sang with his
dying breath amid the holy ruins of Jerusalem.

"Barefoot, and in penitential weeds, he sat there upon the fragment of a
fallen column; down to his breast fell,

"Like a gray forest, his hair; and cast a weird shadow on the face which
looked out through it,--his troubled pale face, with the spiritual
eyes.

"So he sat and sang, like unto a seer out of the foretime to look upon;
Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have risen out of his grave.

"But a bold Saracen came riding that way, aloft on his barb, lolling in
his saddle, and brandishing a naked javelin;

"Into the breast of the poor singer he plunged his deadly shaft, and
shot away like a winged shadow.

"Quietly flowed the Rabbi's life-blood, quietly he sang his song to an
end; and his last dying sigh was Jerusalem!"

But, most of all, Heine shows us this side in a strange poem describing
a public dispute, before King Pedro and his Court, between a Jewish and
a Christian champion, on the merits of their respective faiths. In the
strain of the Jew