He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
Surely the hero, Simon Danz, was something such a man as Hals painted. How does the ballad run?—
A Dutch Picture.
Simon Danz has come home again,
From cruising about with his buccaneers;
He has singed the beard of the King of Spain,
And carried away the Dean of Jaen
And sold him in Algiers.
In his house by the Maese, with its roof of tiles
And weathercocks flying aloft in air,
There are silver tankards of antique styles,
Plunder of convent and castle, and piles
Of carpets rich and rare.
In his tulip garden there by the town
Overlooking the sluggish stream,
With his Moorish cap and dressing-gown
The old sea-captain, hale and brown,
Walks in a waking dream.
A smile in his gray mustachio lurks
Whenever he thinks of the King of Spain.
And the listed tulips look like Turks,
And the silent gardener as he works
Is changed to the Dean of Jaen.
The windmills on the outermost
Verge of the landscape in the haze,
To him are towers on the Spanish coast,
With whisker’d sentinels at their post,
Though this is the river Maese.
But when the winter rains begin,
He sits and smokes by the blazing brands,
And old sea-faring men come in,
Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin,
And rings upon their hands.