You think my spirit rose to flights, Aspiring past all present sights, Invoking from the grave of time The heroes of that city’s prime,— The great Gonsalvo[6] marching on, Or Ferdinand[7] of Aragon?— You think I saw, by camp-fires bright, The turban bow beneath the sight Of chieftains marshall’d, far and near, With drifting plume and flashing spear, Like cloud and lightning sent to sweep Abdillah’s[7] Moors across the deep?— You think I trod these lanes in days When Califs vied to sound their praise, And term’d the town that seem’d so blest “The grander Bagdad of the west”[8]; Or trod them, when it gave the Goth His “Home of holiness and troth”[8]; Or, long ere through its children’s veins Flow’d Roman[9] blood to richen Spain’s, Beheld it named by every mouth, “The matchless gem of all the south”?[8]— Nay, nay, I dreamt with joy intense, But did not heed a hint from thence. V. It must have been Spain’s year-long spring That gave my winter’d fancies wing; And brought to life a long-lost love That these had come to brood above. How throbb’d my heart to see once more That face, that form, that friend of yore! Again my arms were round that neck; And cheek to cheek without a check Our souls had met. O Love, long cold, What frame could hope to feel, when old And numb from long bound loads of pain, Such warmth and life thrill every vein! The gone delight was all too dear. With heart aglow, as dawn drew near, To him who slept amid the past, A Spanish sky seem’d overcast. VI. Bright Sun, I sigh’d, no light can gleam Beside true love and shine supreme! Fair Spain, no realm so fair may be; But love recall’d unsexes thee. Nay, no land shows one sunlit scene That rose-like bursts from earth’s wide green, But brings an image swept away When eyelids close at close of day. ’Tis but the impress mind receives, That, sunn’d or sombre, never leaves. Ah, if the past must always cope With future joys for which we hope, How vain the aims that make their quest A life that merely shall be blest, And slight earth’s meed of lowly sweets For purple heights and golden streets! Faith fails that merely waits below. Dreams after death would bring but woe Without remember’d love that blest The soul before it found its rest. VII. Keep, Cordova, thy rare renown. The veils of twilight, falling down, Could fold around no fairer town; Yet many a sight, where came the night, To this, my soul, had seem’d as bright. I left thee sad; but bore away, With light to linger night and day, And charms divine as thine to me, The dream that came to rival thee. FOOTNOTES