Even with the infidel, the curse of Spain;
And, for the dark eye of a Moorish maid,
Abjured his faith, his God! Now, talk of death!
“The whole of the scene to which the passage belongs, is moulded in the highest spirit of tragic verse. The bewilderment of the mother betrayed into guilt by overpowering affection, and the death of the beautiful enthusiast Ximena, are sketched in a style of excellence little inferior; and the peculiar powers of Mrs Hemans’s poetry, less dramatic than declamatory, have full scope in the spirit-stirring address of the latter to the fainting host of Valencia, as she lifts in her own ancient city the banner of the Cid, and recounts the sublime legend of his martial burial. Spain and its romances formed the darling theme of Mrs Hemans’s muse; and before leaving the subject, she gives us her magnificent series of ballads, the ‘Songs of the Cid,’ which meet us at the close of the drama, as if to form an appropriate chorus to the whole.”—William Archer Butler, Introductory Notice to National Lyrics and Songs for Music. Dublin: 1838.]
Miscellaneous Poems.
SONG.
FOUNDED ON AN ARABIAN ANECDOTE.
Away! though still thy sword is red
With life-blood from my sire,
No drop of thine may now be shed