CASTLES IN SPAIN

We may almost divine the character of a country from its words of farewell. The "cheerio" of England, the "so long" or "good-bye" of America, the "au revoir" of France the "auf Wiedersehen" of Germany and the “vaya usted con Dios" (go with God) of Spain well suit the countries which have adopted them.

The religiously inclined will be at home in Spain. It is a country which boasts of the birthplace of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, and of Tibidabo, the place where the devil tempted Christ with the kingdom of this earth. The country is full of sacred shrines and relics.

In Spain one finds in abundance the romantic, the poetical, the sentimental and the artistic, but, though nature has been prodigal in her soil and climate, the Spaniard has not always endeavored to conserve his wonderful heritage.

"There let the antiquarian pore over the stirring memorials of many thousand years, the vestiges of Phoenecian enterprise, of Roman magnificence, of Moorish elegance in that storehouse of ancient customs, that repository of all elsewhere long forgotten and passed by; there let him gaze upon those classical monuments, unequalled almost in Greece and Italy, and on those fairy Alladin palaces, the creatures of Oriental gorgeousness and imagination, with which Spain alone can enchant" the traveler.

How much of my young heart, O Spain,
Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne
The Cid Campeador!

And shapes more shadowy than these,
In the dim twilight half revealed;
Phoenician galleys on the seas,

The Roman camps like hives of bees,
The Goth uplifting from his knees
Pelayo on his shield.

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Castles in Spain

It was these memories perchance,
From annals of remotest eld,
That lent the colors of romance
To every trivial circumstance,
And changed the form and countenance
Of all that I beheld.

Old towns, whose history lies hid
In monkish chronicle or rhyme,-
Burgos, the birthplace of the Cid,
Zamora and Valladolid,
Toledo, built and walled amid
The wars of Wamba's time;

The long, straight line of the highway,
The distant town that seems so near,
The peasants in the fields, that stay
Their toil to cross themselves and pray,
When from the belfry at midday
The Angelus they hear;

White crosses in the mountain pass,
Mules gay with tassels, the loud din

Of muleteers, the tethered ass
That crops the dusty wayside grass,
And cavaliers with spurs of brass
Alighting at the inn;

White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat,
White cities slumbering by the sea,
White sunshine flooding square and street,
Dark mountain ranges, at whose feet
The river beds are dry with heat,—
All was a dream to me.

Castles in Spain

Yet something sombre and severe

O'er the enchanted landscape reigned;
A terror in the atmosphere

As if King Philip listened near,
Or Torquemada, the austere,

His ghostly sway maintained.

The softer Andalusian skies

Dispelled the sadness and the gloom;
There Cadiz by the seaside lies,
And Seville's orange-orchards rise,
Making the land a paradise
Of beauty and of bloom.

There Cordova is hidden among

The palm, the olive, and the vine;
Gem of the South, by poets sung,
And in whose Mosque Almanzor hung
As lamps the bells that once had rung
At Compostella's shrine.

But over all the rest supreme,

The star of stars, the cynosure,

The artist's and the poet's theme,

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The young man's vision, the old man's dream,— Granada by its winding stream,

The city of the Moor!

And there the Alhambra still recalls
Aladdin's palace of delight:
Allah il Allah! through its halls
Whispers the fountain as it falls,
The Darro darts beneath its walls,

The hills with snow are white.

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Castles in Spain

Ah yes, the hills are white with snow,
And cold with blasts that bite and freeze;
But in the happy vale below

The orange and pomegranate grow,
And wafts of air toss to and fro

The blossoming almond-trees.

The Vega cleft by the Xenil,
The fascination and allure

Of the sweet landscape chains the will;
The traveller lingers on the hill,
His parted lips are breathing still
The last sigh of the Moor.

How like a ruin overgrown

With flowers that hide the rents to time,
Stands now the Past that I have known;
Castles in Spain, not built of stone
But of white summer clouds, and blown
Into this little mist of rhyme!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.