| |
| WITH oaken staff and swinging lantern bright, | |
| He strolls at midnight when the world is still | |
| Through dismal lanes and plazas plumed with light, | |
| Guarding the drowsy thousands in Seville. | |
| |
| Gazing upon his ever star-thronged sky, | 5 |
| With careless step he wanders to and fro; | |
| The gloomy streets reëcho with his cry, | |
| His slow, low, sad, and dreary “Se-re-no!” | |
| |
| He sees the blond moon fleck the rosy towers | |
| Of old giralda with its opal sheen, | 10 |
| And in broad alamedas, warm with flowers, | |
| He sees the Moorish cypress bend and lean. | |
| |
| Then, vaguely dreaming, he recalls the nights | |
| His father passed beneath those very stars, | |
| The tales of escaladed walls, the fights, | 15 |
| The mirth, the songs, the Babel of guitars! | |
| |
| And all his sire had told him years ago, | |
| How, often, in the gardens dim and dark, | |
| He met full many a mantled Romeo, | |
| And stumbled over corpses cold and stark. | 20 |
| |
| But he, alas! had heard no serenade; | |
| No ladder hangs from Donna Linda’s bars, | |
| And the wan glint of an assassin’s blade | |
| He ne’er has seen beneath these quiet stars. | |
| |
| So, weary, in the dead calm of the town, | 25 |
| His soul regrets the Past’s romantic glow, | |
| While mute, despondent, pacing up and down, | |
| He sadly moans his dreary “Se-re-no!” | |
| |
| But sometimes in the grayish light of dawn | |
| He stops and trembles in his clinging cape, | 30 |
| For he can see a lady’s curtain drawn, | |
| And, in the street below, a phantom shape, | |
| |
| Draped in quaint, antique garb, with sword and glove, | |
| Sombrero vast, and mandolin on arm, | |
| Which seems to play a weird, wild lay of love, | 35 |
| And at his coming shows no quick alarm; | |
| |
| But turns, and there a skeleton, all lean | |
| And haggard, leers within the lightless lane! | |
| And the Sereno knows that he has seen | |
| The spectre of the Past, the ghost of Spain. | 40 |
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