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,
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 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
Of the flickering fire of the winter night;
Figures in color and design.

Like those by Rembrandt of the Rhine,
Half darkness and half light.

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 paces his parlor to and fro;

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
For one more cruise with his buccaneers,
To singe the beard of the King of Spain,
And capture another Dean of Jaen
And sell him in Algiers.

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,
In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,

The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
Pelayo on his shield.

It was these memories perchance,
From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,

And changed the form and countenance
Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid

In monkish chronicle or rhyme,
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,

Toledo, built and walled amid
The wars of Wamba's time;

The long, straight line of the highway,
The distant town that seems so near,
The peasants in the fields, that stay
Their toil to cross themselves and pray,
When from the belfry at midday
The Angelus they hear ;

White crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din

Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn;

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
O'er the enchanted landscape reigned;

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
The palm, the olive, and the vine;
Gem of the South, by poets sung,
And in whose Mosque Almanzor hung
As lamps the bells that once had rung
At Compostella's shrine.

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,—