"The light of the world is obscured and dun,
Of what avail the light of the sun?"

His elegy on Jehudah Halevi is instinct with the pathos of patriotic
love for the Holy Land:

"That land, where every stone is an altar to the living God, and
every rock a seat for a prophet of the supreme Lord".

Or, as he exclaims in another poem, "Land of the muses, perfection of
beauty, wherein every stone is a book, every rock a graven tablet!"

Another collection of poems by Mikal, _Kinnor Bat-Ziyyon_ ("The
Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), published at Wilna, posthumously,
contains, besides a number of pieces translated from the German, also
lyric poems, in which the poet breathes forth his soul and his
suffering. He loves life passionately, but he divines that he will not
be granted the opportunity of enjoying it long, and, in an access of
despair, he cries out: "Accursed be death, accursed also life!" His
nature changes, his muse grows sad, and, like his father, he discerns
only injustice and misfortune in the world. In a poem addressed to "The
Stars", he fairly storms high heaven to wrest from it the secret of the
worlds:

"Answer me, I pray, answer me, ye who are denizens on high! O,
stop the march of the eternal laws a single instant! Alas, my
heart is full of disgust over this earth. Here man is born unto
pain and misery!... Here reigns religious Hatred! On her lips
she bears the name of the God of mercy, and in her hands the
blood-dripping sword. She prays, she throws herself upon her