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(From The Spanish Gypsy)
’T IS daylight still, but now the golden cross | |
| Uplifted by the angel on the dome | |
| Stands rayless in calm color clear-defined | |
| Against the northern blue; from turrets high | |
| The flitting splendor sinks with folded wing | 5 |
| Dark-hid till morning, and the battlements | |
| Wear soft relenting whiteness mellowed o’er | |
| By summers generous and winters bland. | |
| Now in the east the distance casts its veil, | |
| And gazes with a deepening earnestness. | 10 |
| The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes | |
| Of shadow-broken gray; the rounded hills | |
| Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs | |
| Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh | |
| Of cactus green and blue, broad-sworded aloes; | 15 |
| The cypress soaring black above the lines | |
| Of white court-walls; the jointed sugar-canes | |
| Pale-golden with their feathers motionless | |
| In the warm quiet;—all thought-teaching form | |
| Utters itself in firm, unshimmering hues. | 20 |
| For the great rock has screened the westering sun | |
| That still on plains beyond streams vaporous gold | |
| Among the branches; and within Bedmar | |
| Has come the time of sweet serenity | |
| When color glows unglittering, and the soul | 25 |
| Of visible things shows silent happiness, | |
| As that of lovers trusting though apart. | |
| The ripe-cheeked fruits, the crimson-petalled flowers; | |
| The wingéd life that pausing seems a gem | |
| Cunningly carven on the dark green leaf; | 30 |
| The face of man with hues supremely blent | |
| To difference fine as of a voice mid sounds;— | |
| Each lovely light-dipped thing seems to emerge | |
| Flushed gravely from baptismal sacrament. | |
| All beauteous existence rests, yet wakes, | 35 |
| Lies still, yet conscious, with clear open eyes | |
| And gentle breath and mild suffuséd joy. | |
| ’T is day, but day that falls like melody | |
| Repeated on a string with graver tones,— | |
| Tones such as linger in a long farewell. * * * * * | 40 |
| Sudden, with gliding motion like a flame | |
| That through dim vapor makes a path of glory, | |
| A figure lithe, all white and saffron-robed, | |
| Flashed right across the circle, and now stood | |
| With ripened arms uplift and regal head, | 45 |
| Like some tall flower whose dark and intense heart | |
| Lies half within a tulip-tinted cup. | |
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| Juan stood fixed and pale; Pepíta stepped | |
| Backward within the ring: the voices fell | |
| From shouts insistent to more passive tones | 50 |
| Half meaning welcome, half astonishment. | |
| “Lady Fedalma!—will she dance for us?” | |
| But she, sole swayed by impulse passionate, | |
| Feeling all life was music and all eyes | |
| The warming, quickening light that music makes, | 55 |
| Moved as, in dance religious, Miriam, | |
| When on the Red Sea shore she raised her voice, | |
| And led the chorus of her people’s joy; | |
| Or as the Trojan maids that reverent sang | |
| Watching the sorrow-crownéd Hecuba: | 60 |
| Moved in slow curves voluminous, gradual, | |
| Feeling and action flowing into one, | |
| In Eden’s natural taintless marriage-bond; | |
| Ardently modest, sensuously pure, | |
| With young delight that wonders at itself | 65 |
| And throbs as innocent as opening flowers, | |
| Knowing not comment,—soilless, beautiful. | |
| The spirit in her gravely glowing face | |
| With sweet community informs her limbs, | |
| Filling their fine gradation with the breath | 70 |
| Of virgin majesty; as full vowelled words | |
| Are new impregnate with the master’s thought. | |
| Even the chance-strayed delicate tendrils black, | |
| That backward ’scape from out her wreathing hair,— | |
| Even the pliant folds that cling transverse | 75 |
| When with obliquely soaring bend altern | |
| She seems a goddess quitting earth again— | |
| Gather expression,—a soft undertone | |
| And resonance exquisite from the grand chord | |
| Of her harmoniously bodied soul. * * * * * | 80 |
| But sudden, at one point, the exultant throng | |
| Is pushed and hustled, and then thrust apart: | |
| Something approaches,—something cuts the ring | |
| Of jubilant idlers,—startling as a streak | |
| From alien wounds across the blooming flesh | 85 |
| Of careless sporting childhood. ’T is the band | |
| Of Gypsy prisoners. Soldiers lead the van | |
| And make sparse flanking guard, aloof surveyed | |
| By gallant Lopez, stringent in command. | |
| The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one, | 90 |
| Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms | |
| And savage melancholy in their eyes | |
| That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair; | |
| Now they are full in sight, now stretch | |
| Right to the centre of the open space. | 95 |
| Fedalma now, with gentle wheeling sweep | |
| Returning, like the loveliest of the Hours | |
| Strayed from her sisters, truant lingering, | |
| Faces again the centre, swings again | |
The uplifted tambourine…..
When lo! with sound | 100 |
| Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice | |
| Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead, | |
| Tolls the great passing-bell that calls to prayer | |
| For souls departed: at the mighty beat | |
| It seems the light sinks awestruck,—’t is the note | 105 |
| Of the sun’s burial; speech and action pause; | |
| Religious silence and the holy sign | |
| Of everlasting memories (the sign | |
| Of death that turned to more diffusive life) | |
| Pass o’er the Plaça. Little children gaze | 110 |
| With lips apart, and feel the unknown god; | |
| And the most men and women pray. Not all. | |
| The soldiers pray; the Gypsies stand unmoved | |
| As pagan statues with proud level gaze. | |
| But he who wears a solitary chain | 115 |
| Heading the file, has turned to face Fedalma. | |
| She motionless, with arm uplifted, guards | |
| The tambourine aloft (lest, sudden-lowered, | |
| Its trivial jingle mar the duteous pause), | |
| Reveres the general prayer, but prays not, stands | 120 |
| With level glance meeting that Gypsy’s eyes, | |
| That seem to her the sadness of the world | |
| Rebuking her, the great bell’s hidden thought | |
| Now first unveiled,—the sorrows unredeemed | |
| Of races outcast, scorned, and wandering. | 125 |
| Why does he look at her? why she at him? | |
| As if the meeting light between their eyes | |
| Made permanent union? His deep-knit brow, | |
| Inflated nostril, scornful lip compressed, | |
| Seem a dark hieroglyph of coming fate | 130 |
| Written before her. | |
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