Classic Poem

Morning

The orange glooms in the half-dawn,
The white walls are pale glimmering dreams,
Trees haunt them, stream-still, dim-illumed
With round gold fruit on green boughs borne.

Mist-pearl the Guadalquivir lies
Shimmering, dropt from the pale heaven;
Star-drunken, a god-ecstatic fool
Mumbling divine, night-dwindling cries.

Passionately the dim Dawn fills
With purple heaps of shadows: Trees,
Their vapour-sleep about their knees,
Dream gem-still on the luminous hills.

Green fires jewel-blazed mid milk-white walls
Bloom from the pale transparent air;
The sunlight flickers on their spires,
The night's dark mirage-tower falls.

On a glittering plain
Far away,
A bony horse with an armoured knight
Labours; his squire behind
Toils and sweats with his ass.

A solitary Tree,
A gesture in the sunlight
Mournful but determined,
A song in the dark
Without gaiety,
A shadow in the white dust!

It is their hope,
It is mirrored in their souls,
In the soul of the bony horse,
In the soul of the ass.

Under the Tree lies the squire,
His mouth is open, and his soul
Flutters over empty wineskins:
The knight leans against the trunk,
The horse and the ass are as still
As fallen branches.

Noon-Siesta
The lattices are shut,
The house is dark and still. . . .
The soul can wander up and down
And work its own will,
Phantom after phantom chase,
Glide from dream to dream,
Quiet as the shadow of a hill
In a slow stream.

Kings, Princesses, Warriors stark,
All in dream array,
Of glittering lances, banners bright
On a great highway,
On the highway lit by no
Sun or Stars or Moon
Through curtained chambers wind their way
Like a bright tune —

Like a tune with many places
Empty, soundless, dark;
There broods the Dove, moored in those places
The Spirit's ancient ark
On the waters faintly shining
High and mournful with black walls
Gleams a ghost, a phantom vessel
Ere the next note falls.

In this stream, in this procession,
Toledo, Saragossa, names
Of Castile and of Aragon
Leap dream-fitful flames,
Arks of human life their dark Towers
Gloomy in the blazing sunlight,
Piercing with blood-tortured thoughts
A sky serene and bright.

Many centuries have passed
Since the Knight and the Squire lay dreaming,
The one of Toledo, Saragossa, Princesses and Giants,
The other of wineskins;
But they are still wandering in Spain,
You may see them any day
Under a tree.

Evening

And when night comes they will sing serenades
Under the open windows,
The lattices will not be shut,
The Moon will wander through the houses:
Spain herself with the voices of the past in her soul
Will sit in the shadows,
And kiss the petals of roses,
And drop them warm to her lovers below.

With the low thrumming of guitars,
With the gold throbbing of stars,
With the purple heaving of the seas,
With the glimmer of fading white walls
She drops her dusky hair over my soul;
O Spain, I am soul-drunken with thee,
I am intoxicated with the scent of thy garments,
I am a river delirious under the Moon
In whose bosom forests and stars and maidens
And innumerable worlds are singing.

With the low thrumming of guitars,
With white arms hanging from the lattices
From clouds of dim hair indistinguishable from the night

The souls of the serenaders are drunken,
Their voices murmur heavily like beetles
Wandering in a blur of flowers:
Spain is glimmering in those white arms,
The flowers float up in the dim darkness,
The shadows fill with her hair;
She has escaped into the palpitating night
Leaving a heap of scented garments —
In her dark room weeps the moonlight.

*****

The night is empty, emptier is the day,
That secret loveliness has passed away;
The sun is burning and the houses lie
Bare and untidy to the airless sky,
The sea is glass, a smooth and glittering pane,
The flies sleep in the dust. This is Spain.