His sea-land is true and so valiantly true,
His leaf-land is fair and so marvellous fair,
His palm-land is filled with a perfumed air
Of magnolia blooms to its dome of blue.
His rose-land has arbors of moss-swept oak,—
Gray, Druid old oaks; and the moss that sways
And swings in the wind is the battle-smoke
Of duellists, dead in her storied days.
His love-land has churches and bells and chimes;
His love-land has altars and orange flowers;
And that is the reason for all these rhymes,—
These bells, they are ringing through all the hours!
His sun-land has churches, and priests at prayer,
White nuns, as white as the far north snow;
They go where danger may bid them go,—
They dare when the angel of death is there.
His love-land has ladies so fair, so fair,
In the Creole quarter, with great black eyes,—
So fair that the Mayor must keep them there
Lest troubles, like troubles of Troy, arise.
His love-land has ladies, with eyes held down,—
Held down, because if they lifted them,
Why, you would be lost in that old French town,
Though you held even to God’s garment hem.
His love-land has ladies so fair, so fair,
That they bend their eyes to the holy book
Lest you should forget yourself, your prayer,
And never more cease to look and to look.
And these are the ladies that no men see,
And this is the reason men see them not.
Better their modest sweet mystery,—
Better by far than the battle-shot.
And so, in this curious old town of tiles,
The proud French quarter of days long gone,
In castles of Spain and tumble-down piles
These wonderful ladies live on and on.
I sit in the church where they come and go;
I dream of glory that has long since gone,
Of the low raised high, of the high brought low,
As in battle-torn days of Napoleon.