S A DUTCH PICTURE IMON 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, There are silver tankards of antique styles, Of carpets rich and rare. In his tulip-garden there by the town, A smile in his gray mustachio lurks 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 whiskered 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 seafaring men come in, Goat-bearded, gray, and with double chin, And rings upon their hands. They sit there in the shadow and shine Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine, And they talk of ventures lost or won, And their talk is ever and ever the same, While they drink the red wine of Tarragon, From the cellars of some Spanish Don, Or convent set on flame. Restless at times with heavy strides He is like a ship that at anchor rides, And swings with the rising and falling tides, And tugs at her anchor-tow. Voices mysterious far and near, Sound of the wind and sound of the sea, Are calling and whispering in his ear. "Simon Danz! Why stayest thou here? Come forth and follow me!" So he thinks he shall take to the sea again How CASTLES IN SPAIN OW much of my young heart, O Spain, Went out to thee in days of yore! What dreams romantic filled my brain, And summoned back to life again The Paladins of Charlemagne The Cid Campeador! And shapes more shadowy than these, The Roman camps like hives of bees, It was these memories perchance, And changed the form and countenance Old towns, whose history lies hid In monkish chronicle or rhyme, Toledo, built and walled amid The long, straight line of the highway, White crosses in the mountain pass, Of muleteers, the tethered ass White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, White cities slumbering by the sea, White sunshine flooding square and street, Dark mountain ranges, at whose feet The river beds are dry with heat, All was a dream to me. Yet something sombre and severe A terror in the atmosphere As if King Philip listened near, Or Torquemada, the austere, His ghostly sway maintained. The softer Andalusian skies Dispelled the sadness and the gloom; There Cadiz by the seaside lies, And Seville's orange-orchards rise, Making the land, a paradise Of beauty and of bloom. There Cordova is hidden among But over all the rest supreme, The star of stars, the cynosure, The artist's and the poet's theme, The young man's vision, the old man's dream,— |