Thus cried the weeper, while his hands his old white beard did tear,
“Farewell, farewell, Granada! thou city without peer!
Woe, woe thou pride of heathendom! seven hundred years and more
Have gone since first the faithful thy royal sceptre bore!
“Thou wert the happy mother of a high renownéd race;
Within thee dwelt a haughty line that now go from their place;
Within thee fearless knights did dwell, who fought with mickle glee
The enemies of proud Castile—the bane of Christientie!
“The mother of fair dames wert thou, of truth and beauty rare,
Into whose arms did courteous knights for solace sweet repair;
For whose dear sakes the gallants of Afric made display
Of might in joust and battle on many a bloody day!
“Here gallants held it little thing for ladies’ sake to die,
Or for the Prophet’s honour, and pride of Soldanry:
For here did valour flourish, and deeds of warlike might
Ennobled lordly palaces, in which was our delight.
“The gardens of thy Vega, its fields and blooming bowers—
Woe, woe! I see their beauty gone, and scatter’d all their flowers
No reverence can he claim, the king that such a land hath lost
On charger never can he ride, nor be heard among the host;
But in some dark and dismal place, where none his face may see,
There, weeping and lamenting, alone that king should be!”
Thus spake Granada’s king as he was riding to the sea,
About to cross Gibraltar’s Strait away to Barbary:
Thus he in heaviness of soul unto his queen did cry.—
(He had stopp’d and ta’en her in his arms, for together they did fly).
“Unhappy king! whose craven soul can brook”—(she ’gan reply)
“To leave behind Granada—who hast not heart to die—
Now for the love I bore thy youth, thee gladly could I slay!
For what is life to leave when such a crown is cast away?”
THE DEATH OF DON ALONZO OF AGUILAR.
The Catholic zeal of Ferdinand and Isabella was gratified by the external conversion at least of great part of the Moors of Granada; but the inhabitants of the Sierra of Alpujarra, to which the remnant of the Moors had retired, resisted every effort of the priests who were sent among them, so that the order for baptism was at length enforced by arms. These Moorish mountaineers resisted strenuously, but were at length subdued, and, in great part, extirpated. Amongst many severe losses sustained by the Spanish forces in this guerilla warfare, was that recorded in the following ballad. The tragic story has been made familiar to English readers by the Bishop of Dromore’s exquisite version of “Rio Verde! Rio Verde!”