MY DREAM AT CORDOVA.
I.
Night bade me rest. I left the street,
Its faces fair and banter sweet;
And oh, how human seem’d the town
Beside which I had laid me down!
But, ere I slept, the rising moon,
From skies as blue as if ’twere noon,
Pour’d forth her light in silvery streams,
Eclipsing all my light of dreams.
And soon, as if some power would shake
My drowsy eyes, and make them wake,
The walls were spray’d with showers of light,
Whose flickerings left a fountain bright
That toss’d the moonbeams in its play,
And dash’d and flash’d their gleams away.
I just could see the fountain flow
Within a marble court[1] below.
It seem’d a spirit, clothed in white,
But half reveal’d to mortal sight,
Whose glancing robes would lift and glide
O’er dainty limbs that danced inside,
And touched the ground with throbbing sweet
As if the tread of fairy feet;
While round about the fount-sent shower,
That strung with pearls each grateful flower,
Rare fragrance rose from bush and bower.
II.
Ere long across the marble court
Soft laughter rang and calls of sport,
And maidens pass’d the entering gate,
Whose voices rose in sweet debate,
So clear, so pure, they might have sprung
From moonlight, not from mortal tongue.
I lay there charm’d, my eyelids closed,
My limbs enchain’d; but, ere I dozed,
Gave one look more. Alas for me!
The moon had moved, and made me see,
In dreamlike light where slept the day,
Vague forms that join’d those maids at play.
They linger’d there, half hid by trees
And sprawling cactus; now at ease,
Now whirling off in shadowy sets
Where urged guitars[2] and castonets.[2]
Anon, this music rose and fell,
As if, because, all fill’d so well,
So laden down with sweets before,
The languid air could hold no more.
“Ah, how could it or I?” I thought;
“This land of lasting spring is fraught
With charms that pale by living truth
The brightest dreams that lured my youth.”
Then, while the music heaved my breast,
The thought it cradled sank to rest.
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.
VII.
Keep, Cordova, thy rare renown.
The veils of twilight, falling down,
Could fold around no fairer town;
Yet many a sight, where came the night,
To this, my soul, had seem’d as bright.
I left thee sad; but bore away,
With light to linger night and day,
And charms divine as thine to me,
The dream that came to rival thee.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “A thoroughly national hotel ... I look down from my window through marble colonnades ... perfumed with the scent of ... trees, which bend ... over a richly sculptured fountain.”—Hare’s Wanderings in Spain, pp. 93, 94.
[2] Instruments found everywhere in Spain.
[3] “The bridge over the Guadalquivir ... composed of sixteen arches ... very picturesque ... built by Octavius Cæsar.”—O’Shea’s Guide to Spain.
[4] “What spot can be more delightful than the grand old court, surrounded by flame-shaped battlements ... beneath huge orange trees planted some three hundred years ago.”—Hare’s Wanderings in Spain, p. 88.
[5] “From the court you step with bewilderment into a roofed-in forest of pillars ... amid the thousand still remaining columns of varied color, thickness, and material, which divide the building into twenty-nine naves one way and nineteen the other. Into the midst of all a cathedral was engrafted in 1547.” (It was built originally for a mosk.)—Idem, p. 89.
[6] Gonsalvo de Cordova, called “the great captain,” born 1443.
[7] Ferdinand of Aragon, whose forces, setting out from Cordova, drove Abu-Abdillah, or Boabdil, the king of the Moors, from Granada in 1492.
[8] Titles applied to the city in different periods of its history,—when inhabited by the Moors, the Goths, and before the Romans conquered it.
[9] Referring to the “blue blood” of the Spanish aristocracy, supposed to be indicative of Roman ancestry.