Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Holland: Vols. XIV–XV. 1876–79. | | | | Spain: Granada | | The Alhambra | | Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) |
| | (From The Abencerrage)
LONELY and still are now thy marble halls, | |
| Thou fair Alhambra! there the feast is o’er; | |
| And with the murmur of thy fountain falls | |
| Blend the wild tones of minstrelsy no more. | |
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| Hushed are the voices that in years gone by | 5 |
| Have mourned, exulted, menaced, through thy towers; | |
| Within thy pillared courts the grass waves high, | |
| And all uncultured bloom thy fairy bowers. | |
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| Unheeded there the flowering myrtle blows, | |
| Through tall arcades unmarked the sunbeam smiles, | 10 |
| And many a tint of softened brilliance throws | |
| O’er fretted walls and shining peristyles. | |
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| And well might Fancy deem thy fabrics lone, | |
| So vast, so silent, and so wildly fair, | |
| Some charmed abode of beings all unknown, | 15 |
| Powerful and viewless, children of the air. | |
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| For there no footstep treads the enchanted ground, | |
| There not a sound the deep repose pervades, | |
| Save winds and founts, diffusing freshness round, | |
| Through the light domes and graceful colonnades. | 20 |
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| Far other tones have swelled those courts along | |
| In days romance yet fondly loves to trace,— | |
| The clash of arms, the voice of choral song, | |
| The revels, combats of a vanished race. | |
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| And yet awhile, at Fancy’s potent call, | 25 |
| Shall rise that race, the chivalrous, the bold; | |
| Peopling once more each fair forsaken hall | |
| With stately forms, the knights and chiefs of old. | | | | |
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