Introduction

Summary

FABLES FROM LONG AGO^a this book of mine

I name: It holds the best of my spiced wine

And rarest cordial^b—a concentrate

Closeted scholars^c should appreciate.

The reason it appears, I now recount

To mark its coming out: God's sacred mount

Is its foundation,^d for it will declare

The quality of holiness, so rare

Its purity, the beauty it will teach

And the nobility of Hebrew speech,

Its ornate splendour^e setting forth in praise

That on it prince and commoner may gaze;^f

For I observed its golden rhetoric

Was dulled^g for many folk, who are so quick

To con the works of heretics, and seek

Philosophy dependent on the Greek,

Arabic3 saws, tags from each several part.^h

I was appalled. In bitterness of heart

I spoke: ‘I judged you touched by the divine,^j

Hewn from an holy quarry, light your mine.^k

Wherefore this mutiny? Through your neglect

My chosen people's treasured gift is wrecked:

From Ethiopia's brood ye are for me

No different,^l nay, as Midianites ye could be,

Born of Keturah,^m mention of you—trash,

As maxims, over-used, seem drear as ash.ⁿ

The Torah's precepts ye have cast aside,^o

With them that choice tongue, wherein are applied

Analogies the jurists use—so fair

A maiden, and so delicate her flair.’^p

The answer their embittered soulq revealed

And their defective learning. ‘Keep it sealed’,

They said, ‘For us—no testimony show,

No Torah:^r quite enough for us to know

The proper hours, morning and night, to say

The credo, and that by the book we pray.

Our circumstances you must blame, that make

Us crass; the pressures round about us break

Morale, with ill afflictions. So we look

To cheer our stunned hearts, to the kind of book

Our rivals^s write—history suits us well.

What the Torah in parables would spell

We find obscure, against the grubby deals

Of daily life cocooned; its laws, one feels,

Though just, are recondite: if one may quote,

“The dumbness of the dove keeps her remote.”

What use tradition-fashioned argument

Of law and lore,^t for those who were not meant

For such?^u How solve nice points, and win, hands down,

If one has never donned the scholar's gown,

And never aimed thereat?’^v In every word

The torment of their sickness could be heard;

Pity and sympathy within me stirred.^w