Till from out of the holes into which they were driven
Their bones should be strown to the host of Heaven
Whose bodies were burn'd in the fire.
Rabbi Ben Ephraim, day by day
(As the hangman, beating up his bounds
Thro' the stifled Ghetto's sinks and stews,
Or the arch inquisitor, going his rounds,
Was pleased to pause, and pick, and choose,
—Too sure of his game, which could not stray,
To miss the luxury of delay)
Had mark'd with a moody indignation
The abomination of desolation,
With the world to witness, and none to gainsay,
Set up in the midst of the Holy Nation,
And the havoc which Heaven refused to stay
In the course of his horrible curse move on,
Where, sometimes driven in trembling crews,
Sometimes singly one by one,
Israel's elders were beckon'd away
To the place where the Christians burn the Jews:
Till he, because that his wealth was known,
And because the king had debts to pay,
Was left, at the last, almost alone
Of all his people in Cordova,
A living man picked out by fate
To bear, and beware of, the daily jibe,
And add the same to the sum of the hate,
Made his on behalf of a slaughter'd tribe.

II.

In the gloomy Ghetto's gloomiest spot,
A certain patch of putrid ground,
There is a place of tombs: Moors rot,
Rats revel there, and devils abound
By night, no cross being there to keep
The evil things in awe: the dead
That house there, sleep no Christian sleep—
They do not sleep at all, it is said;
Tho' how they fare, the Fiend best knows,
Who never vouchsafes to them any repose,
For their worm is awake in the narrow bed,
And the fire that will never be quench'd is fed
On the night that will never close.
There did Rabbi Ben Ephraim
(When he saw, at length, the appointed measure
Of misery meted out to him)
Bury his books, and all his treasure.
Books of wisdom many a one
All the teaching of all the ages,
All the learning under the sun
Learn'd by all the Hebrew sages
To Eliphaz from Solomon;
Not to mention the mystic pages
Of Nathan the son of Shimeon
The Seer, which treat of the sacred use
Of the number Seven (quoth the Jews
"A secret sometime filch'd from us
By one call'd Apollonius"),
The science of the even and odd,
The signs of the letters Aleph and Jod,
And the seven magical names of God.
Furthermore, he laid in store
Many a vessel of beaten ore,
Pure, massy, rich with rare device
Of Florence-work wrought under and o'er,
Shekels of silver, and stones of price,
Sardius, sapphire, topaz, more
In number than may well be told,
Milan stuffs, and merchandise
Of Venice, the many times bought and sold.
He buried them deep where none might mark
—Hid them from sight of the hated race,
Gave them in guard of the Powers of the Dark,
And solemnly set his curse on the place.
Then he saddled his mule, and with him took
Zillah his wife, and Rachel his daughter,
And Manassah his son; and turn'd and shook
The dust from his foot on the place of slaughter,
And cross'd the night, and fled away
(Balking the hangman of his prey)
From out of the city of Cordova.

III.

Rabbi Ben Ephraim never more
Saw Cordova. For the Lord had will'd.
That the dust should be dropp'd on his eyes before
The curse upon Israel was fulfill'd.
Therefore he ended the days of his life
In evil times; and by the hand
Of Rachel his daughter, and Zillah his wife,
Was laid to rest in another land.
But, before his face to the wall he turn'd,
As the eyes of the women about his bed
Grew hungry and hard with a hope unfed,
And the misty lamp more misty burn'd,
To Zillah and Rachel the Rabbi said
Where they might find, if fate turn'd kind,
And the fires in Cordova, grown slack,
Should ever suffer their footsteps back,
The tomb where by stealth he had buried his wealth
In the evil place, when in dearth and lack
He fled from the foe, and the stake, and the rack:

IV.

"A strand of colours, clear to be seen
By the main black cord of it twined between
The scarlet, the golden, and the green:
All the length of the Moorish wall the line
Runs low with his mystic serpent-twine,
Until he is broken against the angle
Where thin grizzled grasses dangle
Like dead men's hairs, from the weeds that clot
The scurfy side of a splinter'd pot
Upon the crumbled cornice squat,
Gaping, long-ear'd, in his hue and shape
Like a Moor's head cut off at the nape.
The line, till it touches the angle follow,
Take pebbles then in the hand, and drop
Stone after stone till the ground sounds hollow.
Thence walk left, till there starts, to stop
Your steps, a thorn-tree with an arm
Stretch'd out as tho' some mad alarm
Had seized upon it from behind.
It points the way until you find
A flat square stone, with letters cut.
Stoop down to lift it, 'twill not move
More than you move a mountain, but
Upon the letter which is third
Of seven in the seventh word
Press with a finger, and you shove
Its weight back softly, as the south
Turns a dead rose lightly over:
Back falls it, and there yawns earth's mouth;
Wherein the treasure is yet to discover,
By means of a spiral cut down the abyss
To the dead men."

V.

                                When he had utter'd this
Rabbi Ben Ephraim turn'd his face,
And slept.

VI.

                     The years went on apace,
Manassah his son, his youngest born,
Trading the isleted sea for corn,