The primary theme I noticed across these poems was pain and despair. The pain of yearning, of not being yearned for in return. They all speak to the power of beauty over one’s emotions. It is neither a particular woman nor man that any of these rabbis is in love with, but their beauty. I would think that such beauty would be praised and lauded in this poetry, but the focus is more on the authors and the pain despair that they feel in wanting that beauty.
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