Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Spain: Valencia | | Valencia | | From the French |
| | (From The Treachery of Ganelon)
Translated by L. S. Costello
VALENCIA! can the wide world show | |
| Aught to exceed thy beauty’s pride! | |
| Valencia! but thy charms to know | |
| Is to forego the world beside! | |
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| When mighty Soleyman ascended | 5 |
| In magic pomp the yielding sky, | |
| By all his gorgeous train attended, | |
| And by his feathered panoply, | |
| He looked upon the earth beneath, | |
| And saw no land so fair as thine, | 10 |
| And felt thy pure and perfumed breath | |
| Rise rich with incense all divine. | |
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| Valencia! not Al Jannat’s bowers, | |
| Her streams of molten gems, her flowers, | |
| Her meads where blessed beings rove, | 15 |
| Where houris, with their eyes of love, | |
| Look from their pearly caverns, bright | |
| With circling rays of living light,— | |
| Not all that Paradise bestows | |
| Can be more pure, more heavenly fair, | 20 |
| And earth,—O, earth no region knows | |
| That may in aught with thee compare! * * * * * | | | | |
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