| |
| SAT we ’neath the dark verandah, | |
| Years and years ago; | |
| And I softly pressed a hand a | |
| Deal more white than snow. | |
| And I cast aside my reina, | 5 |
| As I gazed upon her face, | |
| And I read her “Magdalena,” | |
| While she smoothed her Spanish lace— | |
| Read her Waller’s “Magdalena”— | |
| She had Magdalena’s grace. | 10 |
| Read her of the Spanish duel, | |
| Of the brother, courtly, cruel, | |
| Who between the British wooer | |
| And the Seville lady came; | |
| How her lover promptly slew her | 15 |
| Brother, and then fled in shame— | |
| How he dreamed, in long years after, | |
| Of the river’s rippling laughter— | |
| Of the look he used to know | |
| In the myrtle-curtained villa | 20 |
| Near the city of Sevilla | |
| Years and years ago. | |
| |
| Oh, how warmly was I reading, | |
| As I gazed upon her face! | |
| And my voice took tones of pleading, | 25 |
| For I sought to win her grace. | |
| Surely thought I, in her veins | |
| Runs some drop of foreign strains— | |
| There is something half Castilian | |
| In that lip that shames vermilion; | 30 |
| In that mass of raven tresses, | |
| Tossing like a falcon’s jesses; | |
| In that eye with trailing lashes, | |
| And its witching upward flashes— | |
| Such, indeed, I know, | 35 |
| Shone where Guadalquivir plashes | |
| Years and years ago. | |
| |
| Looking in her face I read it— | |
| How the metre trips!— | |
| And the god of lovers sped it | 40 |
| On my happy lips— | |
| All those words of mystic sweetness | |
| Spoke I with an airy neatness, | |
| As I never had before— | |
| As I cannot speak them more— | 45 |
| Reja, plaza, and mantilla, | |
| “No palabras” and Sevilla, | |
| Caballero and sombrero, | |
| And Duenna and Duero, | |
| Spada, señor, sabe Dios— | 50 |
| Smooth as pipe of Melibœus— | |
| Ah, how very well I read it, | |
| Looking in her lovely eyes! | |
| When ’t was o’er, I looked for credit, | |
| As she softly moved to rise. . . . . . . . . | 55 |
| Doting dream, ah, dream fallacious— | |
| Years and years ago!— | |
| For she only said: “My gracious— | |
| What a lot of French you know!” | |
| |
