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
