Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

106 JEHUDAH HALEVI

59

MINE ONLY ONE

Mine only one, seek God early on His thresh-
hold,

And, like incense, give thy song to His nostrils.
Lo, if thou pursue the vanities of thy time,
And say that all its witcheries are truth,
And if thou drift thereafter all thy nights and
thy days,

And the slumber of its dawns be sweet to thee—
Know that there is naught in thine hands
But only a tree whose boughs will wither

tomorrow.
Abide before thy God and thy King,
Ruth 2,12. Under whose wings thou art come to take
refuge,

Whose name is magnified and sanctified in the

mouth of all
That breathe with the breath of the living God.