University of Virginia Library

RABBI BEN EPHRAIM'S TREASURE.

PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS IN SPAIN. (FIFTEENTH CENTURY.)

I.

The days of Rabbi Ben Ephraim
Were two score years and ten, the day
The hangman call'd at last for him,
And he privily fled from Cordova.
Drop by drop, he had watch'd the cup
Of the wine of bitterness fill'd to the brim;
Drop by drop, he had drain'd it up;
And the time was an evil time for him.
An evil time! For Jehovah's face
Was turn'd in wrath from His chosen race,
And the daughter of Judah must mourn,
Whom His anger had left, in evil case,
To be dogg'd by death from place to place,
With garments bloody and torn.
The time of the heavy years, from of old
By the mouth of His servant the Prophet foretold,
In the days of Josiah the king,
When the Lord upon Jacob his load should bring,
And the hand of Heaven, in the day of His ire,
Be heavy and hot upon son and sire,
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.

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,
Was wreck'd and pick'd up by the smuggler boat
Of a certain prowling Candiote;
And, being young and hale, was sold
By the Greek a bondsman to the Turk.
Zillah, his wife, wax'd white and old.
Rachel, his daughter, loved not work,
But walk'd by the light of her own dark eyes
In wicked ways for the sake of gain.
Meanwhile, Israel's destinies
Survived the scorching stake, and Spain
At length grew weary of burning men;
When hunger'd, and haggard, and gaunt, these two
Forlorn Jew women crept again
Into Cordova; because they knew
Where Rabbi Ben Ephraim by stealth,
When he turn'd his back on his own house-door,
Had buried the whole of his wondrous wealth
In the evil place; and they two were poor.

VII.

So poor indeed, they had been constrain'd
To filch from the refuse flung out to the streets
('Mid the rags and onion-peelings rain'd
Where the town's worst gutter's worst filth greets
With his strongest gust and most savoury sweets
Those blots and failures of Human Nature,
Refused a name in her nomenclature,
That spawn themselves toward night, and bend
To finger the husks and shucks heap'd there,)
The wretched, rat-bitten candle-end
Which, found by good luck, they had treasured with care
Not a whit less solemn than tho' it were
That famous work of the son of Uri,
The candlestick of candlesticks,
—He the long-lost light of Jewry,
Whose almond bowls and scented wicks
Were the boast of the desert, and Salem's glory
Of the knops and flowers, with his branches six!
For this impov'rish'd, curtail'd, flaw'd,
Maltreated, worried, gnaw'd and claw'd
Remnant of what perchance made bright
Once, for laughter and delight,
Some chamber gay, with arras hung,
Whose marbles, mirrors, and flowers among
A lover, his lady's lute above,
To a dear dark-eyelash'd listener sung
Of the flame of a never-dying love,
—Little heeding, meanwhile, the fitful spite
Of the night-wind's mad and mocking sprite,
Which stealthily in at the lattice sprung,
And was wrying the taper's neck apace,—
Must now, with its hungry half-starved light,
Make bold the shuddering flesh to face
The sepulchre's supernatural night,
And the Powers of the Dark keeping guard on the place.

VIII.

And, when to the place of tombs they came,
The spotted moon sunk. Night stood bare
In the waste unlighted air
Wide-arm'd, waiting, and aware,
To horribly hem them in. The flame
The little candle feebly gave,
As it wink'd and winced from grave to grave,
Went fast to furious waste; the same
As a fever-famisht human hope
That is doom'd, from grief to grief, to grope
On darkness blind to a doubtful goal,
And, sway'd by passion here and there
In conflict with some vast despair,
Consumes the substance of the soul
In wavering ways about the world.
The deep enormous night unfurl'd
Her banner'd blackness left and right,
Fold heap'd on fold, to mock such light
With wild defiance; no star pearl'd
The heavy pall, but horror hurl'd
Shadow on shadow; while for spite
The very graves kept out of sight,
And heaven's sworn hatred, winning might
From earth's ill-will, with darkness curl'd
Darkness, all space confounding quite,
So to engender night on night.

IX.

X.

A strand
Of chorded colours, clear to be seen
By the main black dominant, twined between
The scarlet, the golden, and the green.

XI.

XII.

Things that dangle
Hairy and grey o'er the wall's choked angle
From something dull, in hue and shape
Like a Moor's head cut off at the nape.

XIII.

XIV.

Yonder comes
A thorn-tree with a desperate arm
Flung out fierce in wild alarm
Of something which, it madly feels,
The night to plague it yet conceals.
No help it gets tho'! An owl dash'd out
Of the darkness, steering his ghostliness thither,
Pry'd in at the boughs, and pass'd on with a shout
From who-knows-whence to who-knows-whither:
The unquiet Spirit abroad on the air
Moved with a moan that way, and spent
A moment or more in the effort to vent
On the tortured tree which he came to scare
The sullen fit of his discontent;
But, laughing low as he grew aware
Of the long-already-imposed despair
Of the terrified thing he had paused to torment,
He pass'd, pursuing his purpose elsewhere,
And follow'd the whim of his wicked bent:
A rheumy glow-worm, come to peer
Into the hollow trunk, crawl'd near,
And glimmer'd awhile, but intense fear,
Or tame connivance with something wrong
Which the night was intending, quench'd ere long
His lantern. Therefore the tree remains,
For all its gestures void and vain,
Which still at their utmost fail to explain
Any natural cause for the terror that strains
Each desperate limb to be freed and away,
In sheer paralysis of dismay
Struck stark,—and so, night's abject, stands.

XV.

XVI.

A square stone cut
With letters. Thick the moss is driven
Thro' the graver's work now blunt and blurr'd:
There be seven words with letters seven:
A finger-touch on the letter third
Of seven in the seventh word,
And the stone is heaved back: earth yawns and gapes:
A cold strikes up the clammy dark,
And clings: a spawn of vaporous shapes
Floats out in films: a sanguine spark
The taper spits: the snaky stair
Gleams, curling down the abyss laid bare,
Where Rabbi Ben Ephraim's treasure is laid.

XVII.

XVIII.