"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:--
"Our God has not died like a poor innocent lamb for mankind; he is no
gushing philanthropist, no declaimer.
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