Ah, fortune's targe and butt was he, On whom were rained the strokes from hate From love that had not found its goal, From strange vicissitudes of fate. A galley-slave of Dragut he, Who once had pulled the laboring oar, Now, 'mid a garden's leafy boughs, He worked and wept in anguish sore. "O Mother Spain! for thy blest shore Mine eyes impatient yearn; For thy choicest gem is bride of mine, And she longs for my return. They took me from the galley bench; A gardener's slave they set me here, That I might tend the fruit and flowers Through all the changes of the year; Wise choice, indeed, they made of me! For when the drought has parched the field, The clouds that overcast my heart Shall rain in every season yield. O mother Spain! for thy blest shore Mine eyes impatient yearn; For thy choicest gem is bride of mine, And she longs for my return. "They took me from the galley's hold; It was by heaven's all-pitying grace. Yet, even in this garden glade, Has fortune turned away her face. Though lighter now my lot of toil, Yet is it heavier, since no more My tear-dimmed eyes, my heart discern, Across the sea, my native shore. O mother Spain! for thy blest shore Mine eyes impatient yearn; For thy choicest gem is bride of mine, And she longs for my return. "And you, ye exiles, who afar In many a foreign land have strayed; And from strange cities o'er the sea A second fatherland have made-- Degenerate sons of glorious Spain! One thing ye lacked to keep you true, The love no stranger land could share; The courage that could fate subdue. O mother Spain! for thy blest shore Mine eyes impatient yearn; For thy choicest gem is bride of mine, And she longs for my return." THE CAPTIVE'S LAMENT Where Andalusia's plains at length end in the rocky shore, And the billows of the Spanish sea against her boundaries roar, A thousand ruined castles, that were once the haughty pride Of high Cadiz, in days long past, looked down upon the tide. And on the loftiest of them all, in melancholy mood, A solitary captive that stormy evening stood. For he had left the battered skiff that near the land wash lay, And here he sought to rest his soul, and while his grief away, While now, like furies, from the east the gale began to blow, And with the crash of thunder the billows broke below.