Page:Chapters on Jewish literature (IA chaptersonjewish00abra).pdf/118

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Proclaim we then a fast, a holy day,

Make pure our hearts from sin, God's will obey,

And unto him, with humbled spirit pray

Unceasingly. by day and night.

May we yet hear his words: “Thou art my own,

My grace is thine, the shelter of my throne,

for I am thy Redeemer, I alone;

Endure but patiently this night!”

But his hymns, many of which won a permanent place in the prayer-book, are not always sad. Often they are warm with hope, and there is a lilt about them which is almost gay. His chief secular poem, “The Topaz” (Tarshish), is in ten parts, and contains 1210 lines. It is written on an Arabic model: it contains no rhymes, but is metrical, and the same word, with entirely different meanings, occurs at the end of several lines, It needs a good deal of imagination to appreciate Moses Ibn Ezra, and this is perhaps what Charizi meant when he called him “the poet’s poet.”

Another Ibn Ezra, Abraham, one of the