To Josefa
Josefa, when you sing,
With clapping hands, the sorrows of your Spain,
And all the bright-shawled ring
Laugh and clap hands again,
I think how all the sorrows were in vain.
The footlights flicker and spire
In tongues of flame before your tiny feet,
My warm-eyed gipsy, higher,
And in your eyes they meet
More than their light, more than their golden heat.
You sing of Spain, and all
Clap hands for Spain and you, and for the song;
One dances, and the hall
Rings like a beaten gong
With louder-handed clamours of the throng.
Spain, that with dancing mirth
Tripped lightly to the precipice, and fell
Until she felt the earth,
Suddenly, and knew well
That to have fallen through dreams is to touch hell;
Spain, brilliantly arrayed.
Decked for disaster, on disaster hurled,
Here, as in masquerade,
Mimes5 to amuse the world,
Her ruin, a dancer rouged and draped and curled.
Mother of chivalry,
Mother of many sorrows borne for God,
Spain of the saints, is she
A slave beneath the rod,
A merry slave, and in her own abode?
She, who once found, has lost
A world beyond the waters, and she stands
Paying the priceless cost.
Lightly, with lives for lands,
Flowers in her hair, castanets in her hands.
