Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Spain: Santa Maria Rábida, the Convent | | Rábida | | From a Castilian MS |
| | Translated by Samuel Rogers
IN Rábida’s monastic fane | |
| I cannot ask, and ask in vain. | |
| The language of Castile I speak; | |
| Mid many an Arab, many a Greek, | |
| Old in the days of Charlemagne, | 5 |
| When minstrel-music wandered round, | |
| And Science, waking, blessed the sound. | |
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| No earthly thought has here a place, | |
| The cowl let down on every face; | |
| Yet here, in consecrated dust, | 10 |
| Here would I sleep, if sleep I must. | |
| From Genoa when Columbus came | |
| (At once her glory and her shame), | |
| ’T was here he caught the holy flame, | |
| ’T was here the generous vow he made; | 15 |
| His banners on the altar laid. | |
| |
| Here, tempest-worn and desolate, | |
| A pilot journeying through the wild, | |
| Stopped to solicit at the gate | |
| A pittance for his child; | 20 |
| ’T was here, unknowing and unknown, | |
| He stood upon the threshold-stone. | |
| But hope was his, a faith sublime, | |
| That triumphs over place and time: | |
| And here, his mighty labor done, | 25 |
| And his course of glory run, | |
| Awhile as more than man he stood, | |
| So large the debt of gratitude! | | | | |
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