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Anonymous translation
BRAVO! thou nation of a noble line! | |
| Thou mean’st to fashion after beasts thy men. | |
| How well thy mission thou dost now divine, | |
| Escaping from the Latin Church’s shrine | |
| To intrench thyself around the fighters’ pen! | 5 |
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| New Plazas for the bull-fight let there be; | |
| Build them, O Country! pour thy treasures free! | |
| Ah! stranger lands are wiser far than we,— | |
| For here we are but cowherds, we are fools: | |
| Which do we value most, the laws or bulls? | 10 |
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| Who cares for liberty, while he doth roar, | |
| The hunted bull, along the spacious plain, | |
| Or tear the arena, and his victim gore? | |
| When swells his passion with the pricking pain, | |
| Who sees the vision of our mournful Spain? | 15 |
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| And when he draws his breath with hoarsest sigh, | |
| And from his piercéd heart come out the groans, | |
| And men fall down to earth, and horses die, | |
| How sweet to hear the rosy children nigh | |
| Break out in merry laughter’s silvery tones! * * * * * | 20 |
| But hark! I see before my vision rise, | |
| Brave to uphold the war of beasts and men, | |
| Some spirited hidalgo, listening wise. | |
| “I glory in the spectacle,” he cries; | |
| “The thing is Spanish,—it has always been!” | 25 |
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| O patriotic ardor! Let them bind | |
| A starry crown upon the learned brow | |
| Of every noble knight, who thinks to find | |
| Our highest strength within the bull enshrined, | |
| Our Spanish glory in the Picador’s bow! | 30 |
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| With all the fairest ladies of repute | |
| The love of country so refined has grown | |
| They look with rapture even on this brute; | |
| For tenderness is here a foreign shoot, | |
| And cruelty is Spanish-born alone! | 35 |
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