Spring has cast a shower of blossoms over the town and woven a delicate green carpet around the Alhambra. How many many centuries has it not worshipped thus yearly at the feet of the castle? Long ago passionate Moorish women decorated their raven hair there with rosy almond blossoms.—It is long since that the glory of those days has departed. Perhaps this is why the castle walls look down so sadly at the beauty of this blissful vernal soil.
Bidding defiance in the grandeur of their strength the towers of the Alhambra arise. Their fiery red lights skywards like the flames on giant altars.[A]
Is it possible that these massive cyclopean walls should hide a fairy-land?
Impatiently we climb the castle mount. Reaching an old stone gateway ornamented with pomegranates, the noise of the streets is left behind as we enter a yew grove whose ancient giant stems are ivy-grown; blue myrtle covers the ground, the lights gleam golden through the foliage, the wind murmurs among the branches, nightingales sing in the boscage, swallows dart twittering over the tree tops, water hurries babbling down the hilly slope.
All this seems like a miracle in Spain so poor in forests. It is as though another world had opened its gates.
The great Gate of Judgment is passed, and an inconspicuous door leads to the Court of the Myrtles. Here one feels surrounded by the spirit of the Orient. Delicate jasper and alabaster columns support the airy arches which are swung like lace veils from arcade to arcade. The emerald-green waters of the fountain gaze dreamily skywards and at all the bright beauty of the scene.
Then there is the Court of the Lions, subject of so many songs, with the filigreed architecture of its covered walks. Enchanting in its delicate tracery and beauty, it is a fairy-tale, a poem in stone, infinitely rhythmic with music. And indeed, music is the only language that can render such beauty.
The magnificent halls are full of a wealth of ornamentation. The walls are rainbow-like with the colours of Persian carpets and Cashmere shawls. Arabic inscriptions are scrolled along these labyrynths of colour, praising in exalted words the mystic beauty of the halls. One runs joyously: “God has filled me with such a plentitude of beauty that even the stars stay in their course enchanted to gaze on me.”
Once beautiful sultanas looked out from the “Seat of Admiration” (as the Arabs called that jewel of the Alhambra, the Mirador de Daraca,) into the pretty garden filled with the heavy scent of roses, jasmines and oleanders. A swaying mass of tangled climbing plants are festooned from laurel to cypress, and from cypress to orange-tree. In the middle there is a marvellously delicate fountain basin from the edges of which the water slides and drips with tuneful sound as if it fain would tell of long forgotten beauteous days.
We leave the glittering fairy-palace full of memories of the Arabian Nights, and our lips whisper the wish of the Arabic poem writ over a little niche: