Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79.

Spain: Granada

The Alhambra

By Felicia Hemans (1793–1835)

(From The Abencerrage)

LONELY and still are now thy marble halls,

Thou fair Alhambra! there the feast is o’er;

And with the murmur of thy fountain falls

Blend the wild tones of minstrelsy no more.

Hushed are the voices that in years gone by

Have mourned, exulted, menaced, through thy towers;

Within thy pillared courts the grass waves high,

And all uncultured bloom thy fairy bowers.

Unheeded there the flowering myrtle blows,

Through tall arcades unmarked the sunbeam smiles,

And many a tint of softened brilliance throws

O’er fretted walls and shining peristyles.

And well might Fancy deem thy fabrics lone,

So vast, so silent, and so wildly fair,

Some charmed abode of beings all unknown,

Powerful and viewless, children of the air.

For there no footstep treads the enchanted ground,

There not a sound the deep repose pervades,

Save winds and founts, diffusing freshness round,

Through the light domes and graceful colonnades.

Far other tones have swelled those courts along

In days romance yet fondly loves to trace,—

The clash of arms, the voice of choral song,

The revels, combats of a vanished race.

And yet awhile, at Fancy’s potent call,

Shall rise that race, the chivalrous, the bold;

Peopling once more each fair forsaken hall

With stately forms, the knights and chiefs of old.