Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Spain: Cuenca | | Hard Fare at Cuenca | | Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) |
| | Translated by Edward Churton
TO Cuenca, town of rocks and stony valleys, | |
| A wanderer came, with hunger sore bestead; | |
| And gained dry biscuit, when he asked for bread, | |
| Hard as afflicts poor martyrs in the galleys: | |
| An angel brought this dole, refined in malice, | 5 |
| Cruel as fair; she might as soon have fed | |
| His need with fragments from the flint-worn bed, | |
| Where Jucar tumbles down through greenwood alleys. | |
| “No more of biscuit; give me stones,” he said; | |
| “Perchance your townsmen live upon such commons; | 10 |
| Time scarce could do with cliffs what they have done; | |
| Or have these headlands seen Medusa’s head, | |
| Like Atlas old, and thou, whose form is woman’s, | |
| Art some rock-fairy, in and out all stone?” | | | | |
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