Within the _patio de los arrayanes_ there is a pool enclosed in myrtle as a sapphire within emerald. Overhead is the soft pale sky. Beyond the _sala de la barca_, arched like a ship, is the Ambassadors’ Hall, its dome an incessancy of carven woods, columns and walls so tooled that they seem lace threaded with gems. Myriad patios on either side are myriad surprises of wood, plaster, stone that flows with arabesques and softens to the creaminess of linens. Some architectures make one think of man; some make one think of God; some, of the tragic struggle in men’s flesh between the man and the god. Al-Hambra exiles both the earth and heaven. That a palace lacks high poetry, movement of aspirance, is not amiss. But Al-Hambra lacks as well the sense of being made for men to dwell in. It is cold as a jewel and as a jewel hard. Yet unlike other jewels, it adorns no breast and no altar. It is faëry. Yet unlike other visions of surprise, it does not entice the mind. It is no outward form of the old dreams. Nor is it strong, save as some stellar gem, fallen in the mud of our world, has its impregnable strength. It is immaculate of men. It is too far from man, too far from God. It is not strong, yet it is not poetic. Poetry must pay its tribute. If it sing a blade of grass, a kingdom, a divinity--yet it must make its tribute to the world: man in giving music gives himself. Al-Hambra, for all its matchless grace, is incarnate of no warmth, no joy, no agony, no love.... It is a jeweled monster; a sort of dissociate birth of human will. Although its tints are magic, its curves delicate as a woman’s mouth, its forms courteous, and its stuffs transfigurations of the elements into the radiance of silk and the sweetness of wool, yet it is but a fragment. Its rapture parts not from itself. It is Narcissus. It is a _Golem_ of the Moors. * * * * * The rock of Al-Hambra falls into the river and on the farther side rises Al-Baicín, antiphony of Al-Hambra. In the days of the first Nazrites, here was a place of noble mansions. But when the Moslems, exiled from conquered towns, poured into Granada, Al-Baicín became what it is now--a swarming city. This is as near to the Kasbah of Algiers, to the dense Attarine of Fez as you may come in Spain. The town is a lay of alleys maggoting up the breast of the Sierra. The throngs are dark, aburst with energy. Eyes are gentle and give forth no light. Faces are locked as if in obscure struggle of themselves. This folk is neither gay nor sad, savage nor kind. It partakes of the ineffable nature of the houses. What it is, what it has to say--as with the houses--is detached from the hour, is a minglement of nostalgia and obsession. An incommunicable town, knowing no tongue save an archaic one: its houses speak not to us but to their own old shadows.