dots-menu
×

Home  »  An American Anthology, 1787–1900  »  484 Segovia and Madrid

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Rose TerryCooke

484 Segovia and Madrid

IT sings to me in sunshine,

It whispers all day long,

My heartache like an echo

Repeats the wistful song:

Only a quaint old love-lilt,

Wherein my life is hid,—

“My body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid!”

I dream, and wake, and wonder,

For dream and day are one,

Alight with vanished faces,

And days forever done.

They smile and shine around me

As long ago they did;

For my body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid!

Through inland hills and forests

I hear the ocean breeze,

The creak of straining cordage,

The rush of mighty seas,

The lift of angry billows

Through which a swift keel slid;

For my body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid.

O fair-haired little darlings

Who bore my heart away!

A wide and woful ocean

Between us roars to-day;

Yet am I close beside you

Though time and space forbid;

My body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid.

If I were once in heaven,

There would be no more sea;

My heart would cease to wander,

My sorrows cease to be;

My sad eyes sleep forever,

In dust and daisies hid,

And my body leave Segovia.

—Would my soul forget Madrid?