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| HOW much of my young heart, O Spain, | |
| Went out to thee in days of yore! | |
| What dreams romantic filled my brain, | |
| And summoned back to life again | |
| The Paladins of Charlemagne, | 5 |
| The Cid Campeador! | |
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| And shapes more shadowy than these, | |
| In the dim twilight half revealed; | |
| Phœnician galleys on the seas, | |
| The Roman camps like hives of bees, | 10 |
| The Goth uplifting from his knees | |
| Pelayo on his shield. | |
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| It was these memories perchance, | |
| From annals of remotest eld, | |
| That lent the colors of romance | 15 |
| To every trivial circumstance, | |
| And changed the form and countenance | |
| Of all that I beheld. | |
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| Old towns, whose history lies hid | |
| In monkish chronicle or rhyme,— | 20 |
| Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid, | |
| Zamora and Valladolid, | |
| Toledo, built and walled amid | |
| The wars of Wamba’s time; | |
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| The long, straight line of the highway, | 25 |
| The distant town that seems so near, | |
| The peasants in the fields, that stay | |
| Their toil to cross themselves and pray, | |
| When from the belfry at midday | |
| The Angelus they hear; | 30 |
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| White crosses in the mountain pass, | |
| Mules gay with tassels, the loud din | |
| Of muleteers, the tethered ass | |
| That crops the dusty wayside grass, | |
| And cavaliers with spurs of brass | 35 |
| Alighting at the inn; | |
| |
| White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, | |
| White cities slumbering by the sea, | |
| White sunshine flooding square and street, | |
| Dark mountain ranges, at whose feet | 40 |
| The river beds are dry with heat,— | |
| All was a dream to me. | |
| |
| Yet something sombre and severe | |
| O’er the enchanted landscape reigned; | |
| A terror in the atmosphere | 45 |
| As if King Philip listened near, | |
| Or Torquemada, the austere, | |
| His ghostly sway maintained. | |
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| The softer Andalusian skies | |
| Dispelled the sadness and the gloom; | 50 |
| There Cadiz by the seaside lies, | |
| And Seville’s orange-orchards rise, | |
| Making the land a paradise | |
| Of beauty and of bloom. | |
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| There Cordova is hidden among | 55 |
| The palm, the olive, and the vine; | |
| Gem of the South, by poets sung, | |
| And in whose mosque Almanzor hung | |
| As lamps the bells that once had rung | |
| At Compostella’s shrine. | 60 |
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| But over all the rest supreme, | |
| The star of stars, the cynosure, | |
| The artist’s and the poet’s theme, | |
| The young man’s vision, the old man’s dream,— | |
| Granada by its winding stream, | 65 |
| The city of the Moor! | |
| |
| And there the Alhambra still recalls | |
| Aladdin’s palace of delight: | |
| Allah il Allah! through its halls | |
| Whispers the fountain as it falls, | 70 |
| The Darro darts beneath its walls, | |
| The hills with snow are white. | |
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| Ah yes, the hills are white with snow, | |
| And cold with blasts that bite and freeze; | |
| But in the happy vale below | 75 |
| The orange and pomegranate grow, | |
| And wafts of air toss to and fro | |
| The blossoming almond trees. | |
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| The Vega cleft by the Xenil, | |
| The fascination and allure | 80 |
| Of the sweet landscape chains the will; | |
| The traveller lingers on the hill, | |
| His parted lips are breathing still | |
| The last sigh of the Moor. | |
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| How like a ruin overgrown | 85 |
| With flowers that hide the rents of time, | |
| Stands now the Past that I have known; | |
| Castles in Spain, not built of stone | |
| But of white summer clouds, and blown | |
| Into this little mist of rhyme! | 90 |
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