134 et seq.] [Footnote 2: It was made from the German translation of Schiller] [Footnote 3: See the poems "Solomon and Koheleth," "Jael and Sisera," and "Judah ha-Levi."] A year after the death of our poet, in 1853, there appeared in the same capital of Lithuania the historic novel _Ahabat Zion_ ("Love of Zion").
Its author, Abraham Mapu of Kovno (1808-1867), was a poor melammed who had by his own endeavors and without the help of a teacher raised himself to the level of a modern Hebrew pedagogue.

He lived in two worlds, in the valley of tears, such as the ghetto presented during the reign of Nicholas, and in the radiant recollections of the far-off biblical past.

The inspired dreamer, while strolling on the banks of the Niemen, among the hills which skirt the city of Kovno, was picturing to himself the luminous dawn of the Jewish nation.

He published these radiant descriptions of ancient Judaea in the dismal year of the "captured recruits." [1] The youths of the ghetto, who had been poring over talmudic folios, fell eagerly upon this little book which breathed the perfumes of Sharon and Carmel.

They read it in secret--to read a novel openly was not a safe thing in those days--, and their hearts expanded with rapture over the enchanting idyls of the time of King Hezekiah, the portrayal of tumultuous Jerusalem and peaceful Beth-lehem.
They sighed over the fate of the lovers Amnon and Tamar, and in their flight of imagination were carried far away from painful reality.