Moses ibn Ezra

Moses ibn Ezra (1070-1139) was a Spanish Hebrew poet. When the older poets were writing religious poetry, this younger poet was producing secular poems.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Sorrow shatters my heart ;

And men distress it with blame,
Because it follows love.
- Sorrow Shatters My Heart

• Like a bird in flight

My life-span seems -
My years its wings,
Their feathers, days.
In all my years,
In all their days,
I have reached but a shadow
Of my desires.
- Wrung with Anguish, Songs of Wandering

• And where are the graves, so many graves

Of all who have died on earth
since the beginning ?
Grave tunnelling into grave,
Headstone and obelisk crumbled ito one dust,
Bodies heaped upon bodies, in motionless orgy -
All sleeping together in deep holes,
Fragments of chalk,
Stained rubies.
- Graves

• Man in the midst of the world is like a weaver,

And his days are but a thread.
Alas, the day that his web is finished
There is no more hope for his life.
- Man

Judah Ha-Levi