palace court of thine. 
  Ah, little dost thou reck of me, of all my pleasures flown,
  But in thy pride dost only think, false lady, of thine own. 
  And is it weakness bids me still to all thy faults be blind
  And bear thy lovely image thus stamped upon my mind? 
  For when I love, the slight offence, though fleeting may be the smart,
  Is heinous as the treacherous stroke that stabs a faithful heart. 
  And woman by one look unkind, one frown, can bring despair
  Upon the bosom of the man whose spirit worships her. 
  Take, then, this counsel, ’tis the last that I shall breathe to thee,
  Though on the winds I know these words of mine will wasted be: 
  I was the first on whom thou didst bestow the fond caress,
  And gave those pledges of thy soul, that hour of happiness;
  Oh, keep the faith of those young days!  Thy honor and renown
  Thou must not blight by love unkind, by treachery’s heartless frown. 
  For naught in life is safe and sure if faith thou shouldst discard,
  And the sunlight of the fairest soul is oft the swiftest marred. 
  I will not sign this letter nor set to it my name;
  For I am not that happy man to whom love’s message came,
  Who in thy bower thy accents sweet enraptured heard that day,
  When on thy heaving bosom, thy chosen love, I lay. 
  Yet well thou’lt know the hand that wrote this letter for thine eye,
  For conscience will remind thee of thy fickle treachery. 
  Dissemble as thou wilt, and play with woman’s skill thy part,
  Thou knowest there is but one who bears for thee a broken heart.” 
  Thus read the valiant castellan of Baza’s castle tower,
  Then sealed the scrip and sent it to the Moorish maiden’s bower.

ZAIDA OF TOLEDO

  Upon a gilded balcony, which decked a mansion high,
  A place where ladies kept their watch on every passer-by,
  While Tagus with a murmur mild his gentle waters drew
  To touch the mighty buttress with waves so bright and blue,
  Stands Zaida, radiant in her charms, the flower of Moorish maids,
  And with her arching hand of snow her anxious eyes she shades,
  Searching the long and dusty road that to Ocana leads,
  For the flash of knightly armor and the tramp of hurrying steeds. 
  The glow of amorous hope has lit her cheek with rosy red,
  Yet wrinkles of too anxious love her beauteous brow o’er-spread;
  For she looks to see if up the road there rides a warrior tall—­
  The haughty Bencerraje, whom she loves the best of all. 
  At every looming figure that blots the vega bright,
  She starts and peers with changing face, and strains her eager sight;
  For every burly form she sees upon the distant street
  Is to her the Bencerraje whom her bosom longs to greet. 
  And many a distant object that rose upon her view
  Filled her whole soul with rapture, as