CARMEN.
LA Gitanilla! tall dragoons
In Andalusian afternoons,
With ogling eye and compliment
Smiled on you, as along you went
Some sleepy street of old Seville;
Twirled with a military skill
Moustaches; buttoned uniforms
Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.
Proud, wicked head and hair blue-black!
Whence your mantilla, half thrown back,
Discovered shoulders and bold breast
Bohemian brown: and you were dressed—
In some short skirt of gipsy red
Of smuggled stuff; thence stockings dead
White silk exposed with many a hole
Thro' which your plump legs roguish stole
A fleshly look; and tiny toes
In red morocco shoes with bows
Of scarlet ribbons. Daintily
You walked by me and I did see
Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip,
That gnawed the rose you once did flip
At bashful Jose's nose while loud
Laughed the guant guards among the crowd.
And, in your brazen chemise thrust,
Heaved with the swelling of your bust,
That bunch of white acacia blooms
Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.
As in a cool neveria
I ate an ice with Mérimée,
Dark Carmencita, you passed gay,
All holiday bedizenéd,
A new mantilla on your head;
A crimson dress bespangled fierce;
And crescent gold, hung in your ears,
Shone wrought Morisco; and each shoe
Cordovan leather, spangled blue,
Glanced merriment; and from large arms
To well-turned ancles all your charms
Blew flutterings and glitterings
Of satin bands and beaded strings;
And 'round each arm's fair thigh one fold,
And graceful wrists, a twisted gold
Coiled serpents, tails fixed in the head,
Convulsive-jeweled glossy red.
In flowers and trimmings to the jar
Of mandolin and low guitar
You in the grated patio
Danced; the curled coxcombs' flirting row
Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,
With wily motion and glad glance
Voluptuous, the wild romalis,
Where every movement was a kiss
Of elegance delicious, wound
In your Basque tambourine's dull sound.
Or as the ebon castanets
Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,
Saw angry Jose thro' the grate
Glare on us a pale face of hate,
When some indecent colonel there
Presumed too lewdly for his ear.
Some still night in Seville; the street,
Candilejo; two shadows meet—
Flash sabres; crossed within the moon,—
Clash rapidly—a dead dragoon.