SANTA MARIA RÁBIDA, THE CONVENT—RÁBIDA.
Samuel Rogers, the English banker-poet. Born near London, July 30, 1763; died December, 1855. Translated from a Castilian MS., and printed as an introduction to his poem, "The Voyage of Columbus." It is stated that he spent $50,000 in the illustrations of this volume of his poems.
In Rábida's monastic fane
I can not ask, and ask in vain;
The language of Castille I speak,
'Mid many an Arab, many a Greek,
Old in the days of Charlemagne,
When minstrel-music wandered round,
And science, waking, blessed the sound.
No earthly thought has here a place,
The cowl let down on every face;
Yet here, in consecrated dust,
Here would I sleep, if sleep I must.
From Genoa, when Columbus came
(At once her glory and her shame),
'T was here he caught the holy flame;
'T was here the generous vow he made;
His banners on the altar laid.
Here, tempest-worn and desolate,
A pilot journeying through the wild
Stopped to solicit at the gate
A pittance for his child.
'T was here, unknowing and unknown,
He stood upon the threshold stone.
But hope was his, a faith sublime,
That triumphs over place and time;
And here, his mighty labor done,
And here, his course of glory run,
Awhile as more than man he stood,
So large the debt of gratitude.
Who the great secret of the deep possessed,
And, issuing through the portals of the West,
Fearless, resolved, with every sail unfurled,
Planted his standard on the unknown world.