Chapter III

I slept and dreamt. To you it seems
No censor, swung to souls in dreams
Before the mind’s most holy shrine,
Rear’d there to memories most divine,
Could incense hold whose fumes could rise
And dim what bless’d my closing eyes.
You think my soul most surely thought
Of Cordova in dreams it brought.
You think that once again it calms
My mood to watch beneath the palms
The ancient river[3] freshly lave
Rome’s ruined bridge[3] that naught could save.
You think, once more, my wonder wends
Across that orange-court[4] and bends
In that cathedral-mosk,[5] in which
A thousand[5] shafts with sculptures rich
Surround the soul like ghosts of trees
Beyond the touch of time or breeze,
While all the shafts to all bespeak,
In jasper, porphyry, verdantique,
The skill that train’d their artist’s hand
In grand old times that blest this land
Before the Moor’s glad suns had set
On days that earth can ne’er forget.
Nay, nay, I dreamt with joy intense,
But did not heed a hint from thence.

IV.

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.