"Toledo is large," he wrote to a friend, "and my patients are
hard masters. I, their slave, spend my days in serving their will, and
consume my years in healing their infirmities." Before making up a
prescription, he, like Sir Thomas Browne, used to say a prayer in which
he confessed that he had no great faith in the healing powers of his
art. Jehuda Halevi was, indeed, dissatisfied with his life altogether.
"My heart is in the East, but I am sunk in the West," he lamented. He
was unhappy because his beloved was far from him; his lady-love was
beyond the reach of his earnest gaze. In Heine's oft-quoted words,

She for whom the Rabbi languished
Was a woe-begone poor darling,
Desolation's very image,
And her name--Jerusalem.

The eager passion for one sight of Jerusalem grew on him, and dominated
the third portion of his life. At length nothing could restrain him; go
he would, though he die in the effort. And go he did, and die he did in
the effort. The news of his determination spread through Spain, and
everywhere hands were held out to restrain him. But his heart lightened
as the day of departure came. His poems written at this time are hopeful
and full of cheery feeling. In Egypt, a determined attempt was made by
the Jews to keep him among them. But it was vain. Onward to Jerusalem:
this was his one thought. He tarried in Egypt but a short while, then he
passed to Tyre and Damascus. At Damascus, in the year 1140 or
thereabouts, he wrote the ode to Zion which made his name immortal, an
ode in which he gave vent to all the intense passion which filled his
soul. The following are some stanzas taken from this address to
Jerusalem:

The glory of the Lord has been alway
Thy sole and perfect light;
Thou needest not the sun to shine by day,
Nor moon and stars to illumine thee by night.
I would that, where God's spirit was of yore
Poured out unto thy holy ones, I might
There too my soul outpour!
The house of kings and throne of God wert thou,
How comes it then that now
Slaves fill the throne where sat thy kings before?

Oh! who will lead me on
To seek the spots where, in far distant years,
The angels in their glory dawned upon
Thy messengers and seers?

Oh! who will give me wings
That I may fly away,
And there, at rest from all my wanderings,
The ruins of my heart among thy ruins lay?

* * * * *