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Translated by Edward Churton
BOUND in bonds of toil and sorrow, | |
| Where the Turkish corsair lay, | |
| Gazing on the ruddy morrow, | |
| O’er Marbella’s sparkling bay; | |
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| Wearily his pale eye straining | 5 |
| To the far-off sunbright shore, | |
| Dragut’s captive mourned complaining | |
| To the sound of chain and oar: | |
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| “Sun of sacred Spain, whose waters | |
| Now in peace unruffled flow, | 10 |
| Heedless of the wreck of slaughters | |
| Heaped in weltering depths below; | |
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| “Since thy tide’s resistless power | |
| Bears thee to each shore and strand, | |
| To each rockbuilt town and tower | 15 |
| Fencing round my native land: | |
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| “Hast thou seen where, doomed to languish, | |
| Dwells the maid I love so well? | |
| Are they true, those tears of anguish, | |
| Which to me her letters tell? | 20 |
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| “For if tears from heart so tender | |
| Have enriched thy watery store, | |
| Thy bright sands must pass in splendor | |
| India’s seas and pearly shore. | |
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| “Tell me, waves of sacred glory, | 25 |
| Grant the boon my sorrow craves; | |
| For renowned in ancient story | |
| Are the voices of the waves. | |
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| “Vainly do I ask: she lives not; | |
| Else the depth would answer give: | 30 |
| Voice or token since it gives not, | |
| She hath perished, yet I live: | |
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| “If ’t is life, to toil despairing, | |
| Bondman to a stranger’s will, | |
| Ten long years of thraldom, wearing | 35 |
| Chains that pain, yet fail to kill. | |
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| “Freedom now no hope can waken, | |
| Love no more a joy supply; | |
| Yet I breathe, of Death forsaken; | |
| For the wretched cannot die.” | 40 |
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| Here he paused, in distance eying, | |
| O’er the waters far away, | |
| Six tall sails whose ensigns flying | |
| Did the bannered Cross display; | |
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| As they came in beauty riding, | 45 |
| Terror seized the roving Moor, | |
| And he spoke in anger chiding, | |
| “Slave, more strongly ply thine oar.” | |
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