Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Spain: Madrid | | Madrid | | Alfred de Musset (1810–1857) |
| | Anonymous translation
MADRID is princess of all Spain, | |
| O’er every land her beauties reign, | |
| Famed for black as for blue eyes; | |
| Madrid, white city of serenades, | |
| Along whose twilight promenades | 5 |
| Small feet trip when through the skies | |
| Sunset sinks and stars arise. | |
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| City of the tauridian game, | |
| Where winking soft hands yield acclaim, | |
| While the scarfs flutter, fans make play; | 10 |
| Where, of a lovely starry night, | |
| The dusk señoras veiled in white, | |
| With step superb, came forth to pray, | |
| Down the blue stairs in Vesper’s ray. | |
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| Madrid, Madrid, I love to jest | 15 |
| With thy gay stately dames who rest | |
| Round the fount by the river’s strand; | |
| For one, the rarest of the rare, | |
| With dusk-bright amorous brows is there, | |
| Whose finger-tip I prize beyond | 20 |
| The fair or dark of any land. | |
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| One whom an old duenna tends | |
| With eyes demure from sparks or friends; | |
| Nor opes her casement but to me, | |
| When azure silence domes the town, | 25 |
| The sheep bleat on the moorlands brown, | |
| And past the mountain’s purple knee | |
| In cloud, the soft moon nears the sea. * * * * * | | | | |
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