| |
(From The Spanish Gypsy)
’T IS the warm South, where Europe spreads her lands | |
| Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep: | |
| Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love | |
| (A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines) | |
| On the mid sea that moans with memories, | 5 |
| And on the untravelled ocean, whose vast tides | |
| Pant dumbly passionate with dreams of youth. | |
| This river, shadowed by the battlements | |
| And gleaming silvery towards the northern sky, | |
| Feeds the famed stream that waters Andalus, | 10 |
| And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air, | |
| By Córdova and Seville to the bay | |
| Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood | |
| Of Guadiana. This deep mountain-gorge | |
| Slopes widening on the olive-pluméd plains | 15 |
| Of fair Granada: one far-stretching arm | |
| Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights | |
| Of Alpujarras, where the new-bathed day | |
| With oriflamme uplifted o’er the peaks | |
| Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows | 20 |
| That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars; | |
| Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness | |
| From Almería’s purple-shadowed bay | |
| On to the far-off rocks that gaze and glow,— | |
| On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart | 25 |
| Of glorious Morisma, gasping now, | |
| A maiméd giant in his agony. | |
| This town that dips its feet within the stream, | |
| And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele, | |
| Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks, | 30 |
| Is rich Bedmar; ’t was Moorish long ago, | |
| But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque, | |
| And bells make Catholic the trembling air. | |
| |
