Castles in Spain

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * Track #194 On The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Castles in Spain by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Castles in Spain Annotated

How much of my young heart, O Spain,
&nbsp Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne
&nbsp The Cid Campeador!

And shapes more shadowy than these,
&nbsp In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,
The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
&nbsp Pelayo on his shield.

It was these memories perchance,
&nbsp From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,
And changed the form and countenance
&nbsp Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid
&nbsp In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,
Toledo, built and walled amid
&nbsp The wars of Wamba's time;

The long, straight line of the high-way,
&nbsp The distant town that seems so near,
The peasants in the fields, that stay
Their toil to cross themselves and pray,
When from the belfry at midday
&nbsp The Angelus they hear;

White crosses in the mountain pass,
&nbsp Mules gay with tassels, the loud din
Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
&nbsp Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,
&nbsp White cities slumbering by the sea,
White sunshine flooding square and street,
Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet
The river-beds are dry with heat,—
&nbsp All was a dream to me.

Yet something sombre and severe
&nbsp O'er the enchanted landscape reigned;
A terror in the atmosphere
As if King Philip listened near,
Or Torquemada, the austere,
&nbsp His ghostly sway maintained.

The softer Andalusian skies
&nbsp Dispelled the sadness and the gloom;
There Cadiz by the seaside lies,
And Seville's orange-orchards rise,
Making the land a paradise
&nbsp Of beauty and of bloom.
There Cordova is hidden among
&nbsp The palm, the olive, and the vine;
Gem of the South, by poets sung,
And in whose Mosque Ahmanzor hung
As lamps the bells that once had rung
&nbsp At Compostella's shrine.

But over all the rest supreme,
&nbsp The star of stars, the cynosure,
The artist's and the poet's theme,
The young man's vision, the old man's dream,—
Granada by its winding stream,
&nbsp The city of the Moor!

And there the Alhambra still recalls
&nbsp Aladdin's palace of delight;
Allah il Allah! through its halls
Whispers the fountain as it falls,
The Darro darts beneath its walls,
&nbsp The hills with snow are white.

Ah yes, the hills are white with snow,
&nbsp And cold with blasts that bite and freeze;
But in the happy vale below
The orange and pomegranate grow,
And wafts of air toss to and fro
&nbsp The blossoming almond-trees.

The Vega cleft by the Xenil,
&nbsp The fascination and allure
Of the sweet landscape chains the will;
The traveller lingers on the hill,
His parted lips are breathing still
&nbsp The last sigh of the Moor.

How like a ruin overgrown
&nbsp With flower's that hide the rents of time,
Stands now the Past that I have known,
Castles in Spain, not built of stone
But of white summer clouds, and blown
&nbsp Into this little mist of rhyme!

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