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| QUICK, painter, quick, the moment seize | |
| Amid the snowy Pyrenees; | |
| More evanescent than the snow | |
| The pictures come, are seen, and go: | |
| Quick, quick, currente calamo. | 5 |
| I do not ask the tints that fill | |
| The gate of day ’twixt hill and hill, | |
| I ask not for the hues that fleet | |
| Above the distant peaks; my feet | |
| Are on a poplar-bordered road, | 10 |
| Where, with a saddle and a load, | |
| A donkey, old and ashen-gray, | |
| Reluctant works his dusty way. | |
| Before him, still with might and main | |
| Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, | 15 |
| A girl: before both him and me | |
| Frequent she turns and lets me see, | |
| Unconscious lets me scan and trace | |
| The sunny darkness of her face, | |
| And outlines full of Southern grace. | 20 |
| Following, I notice, yet and yet, | |
| Her olive skin, dark eyes, deep set | |
| And black, and blacker e’en than jet | |
| The escaping hair that scantly showed, | |
| Since o’er it, in the country mode, | 25 |
| For winter warmth and summer shade, | |
| The lap of scarlet cloth is laid. | |
| And then back falling from the head | |
| A crimson kerchief overspread | |
| Her jacket blue, thence passing down | 30 |
| A skirt of darkest yellow brown, | |
| Coarse stuff, allowing to the view | |
| The smooth limb to the woollen shoe. | |
| But who,—here ’s some one following too,— | |
| A priest, and reading at his book! | 35 |
| Read on, O priest, and do not look! | |
| Consider,—she is but a child,— | |
| Yet might your fancy be beguiled,— | |
| Read on, O priest, and pass and go! | |
| But see, succeeding in a row, | 40 |
| Two, three, and four, a motley train, | |
| Musicians wandering back to Spain; | |
| With fiddle and with tambourine, | |
| A man with women following seen; | |
| What dresses, ribbon-ends, and flowers! | 45 |
| And, sight to wonder at for hours, | |
| The man,—to Phillip has he sat? | |
| With butterfly-like velvet hat, | |
| One dame his big bassoon conveys, | |
| On one his gentle arm he lays; | 50 |
| They stop and look, and something say, | |
| And to “España” ask the way. | |
| But while I speak and point them on, | |
| Alas! my dearer friends are gone; | |
| The dark-eyed maiden and the ass | 55 |
| Have had the time the bridge to pass, | |
| Vainly beyond it far descried; | |
| Adieu: and peace with you abide, | |
| Gray donkey and your beauteous guide. | |
| The pictures come, the pictures go, | 60 |
| Quick, quick, currente calamo. | |
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