rs to pour,
To sob and drench thy sacred robes, till they
Could hold no more.

But lo! my tears are dried, when, fast outpoured,
They down my cheeks are shed,
Scorched by the fire within, because thy Lord
Hath turned and sped.

Yea, I am desolate and sore bereft,
Lo! a forsaken one,
Like a sole beacon on a mountain left,
A tower alone.

I hear the voice of singers now no more,
Silence their song hath bound,
For broken are the strings on harps of yore,
Viols of sweet sound.

I am astonied that the day's fair light
Yet shineth brilliantly
On all things; but is ever dark as night
To me and thee.

* * * * *

Even as when thy Rock afflicted thee,
He will assuage thy woe,
And turn again the tribes' captivity,
And raise the low.

Yet shalt thou wear thy scarlet raiment choice,
And sound the timbrels high,
And glad amid the dancers shalt rejoice,
With joyful cry.

My heart shall be uplifted on the day
Thy Rock shall be thy light,
When he shall make thy gloom to pass away,
Thy darkness bright.

This combination of the poetical with the legal mind was parallelled by
other combinations in such masters of "Responses" as the Sheshet and
Duran families in Algiers in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In
these men depth of learning was associated with width of culture.
Others, such as Moses and Judah Minz, Jacob Weil, and Israel Isserlein,
whose influence was paramount in Germany in the fifteenth century, were
less cultivated, but their learning was associated with a geniality and
sense of humor that make their "Responses" very human and very
entertaining. There is the same homely, affectionate air in the
collection of _Minhagim_, or Customs, known as the _Maharil_, which
belongs to the same period. On the other hand, David Abi Zimra, Rabbi of
Cairo in the sixteenth century, was as independent as he was learned. It
was he, for instance, who abolished the old custom of dating Hebrew
documents from the Seleucid era (311 B.C.E.). And, to pass beyond the
time of Karo, the writers of "Responses" include the gifted Jair Chayim
Bacharach (seventeenth century), a critic as well as a legalist; Chacham
Zevi and Jacob Emden in Amsterdam, and Ezekiel Landau in Prague, the
former two of whom opposed the Messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi, and
th