“A dog with the desires of a dog, he wallows all the week long in the filth and refuse of life, amidst the jeers of the boys in the street.

“But every Friday evening, at the twilight hour, suddenly the magic passes off, and the dog becomes once more a human being.

“A man with the feelings of a man, with head and heart raised aloft, in festal garb, in almost clean garb he enters the halls of his Father.

“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 all the fierceness of the old Hebrew genius, all its rigid defiant Monotheism, appear:—­