Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Spain: Valencia

Valencia

By From the French

(From The Treachery of Ganelon)
Translated by L. S. Costello

VALENCIA! can the wide world show

Aught to exceed thy beauty’s pride!

Valencia! but thy charms to know

Is to forego the world beside!

When mighty Soleyman ascended

In magic pomp the yielding sky,

By all his gorgeous train attended,

And by his feathered panoply,

He looked upon the earth beneath,

And saw no land so fair as thine,

And felt thy pure and perfumed breath

Rise rich with incense all divine.

Valencia! not Al Jannat’s bowers,

Her streams of molten gems, her flowers,

Her meads where blessed beings rove,

Where houris, with their eyes of love,

Look from their pearly caverns, bright

With circling rays of living light,—

Not all that Paradise bestows

Can be more pure, more heavenly fair,

And earth,—O, earth no region knows

That may in aught with thee compare!

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