Selected Poems (Engelse vertaling)

JEHUDAH HALEVI 153

And pass into thy forest and incline

To Carmel, and would stand in Gilead's ways
And marvel at that distant mountain thine—¹

Thy Mount Abarim and thy Mountain Hor,
There where the two great luminaries sleep
Which were thy teachers and thy lights before.

The life of souls thine air is; yea, and thou
Hast purest myrrh for grains of dust; and
deep

With honey from the comb thy rivers flow.

Sweet to my soul 'twould be to wander bare

And go unshod in places waxen waste—
Desolate since thine oracles were there;

Where thine Ark rested, hidden in thine heart,
And where, within, thy Cherubim were
placed

Which in thine inmost chambers dwelt apart.

¹  will cut off and cast away my crown
Of locks, and curse the season which pro-
faned

In unclean land the crowns which were thine
own.

¹ See note in prose version.