Nay, ask not, King, for I wear the ring of a faithful wife and true;
Some graceful maid or a widow arrayed in her weeds is the wife for you,
And close I cling to the Moorish King who holds me to his breast,
For well I ween it can be seen that of all he loves me best.”
ABENAMAR’S JEALOUSY
Alhambra’s bell had not yet pealed
Its morning note o’er tower and
field;
Barmeja’s bastions glittered bright,
O’ersilvered with the morning light;
When rising from a pallet blest
With no refreshing dews of rest,
For slumber had relinquished there
His place to solitary care,
Brave Abenamar pondered deep
How lovers must surrender sleep.
And when he saw the morning rise,
While sleep still sealed Daraja’s
eyes,
Amid his tears, to soothe his pain,
He sang this melancholy strain:
“The morn is up,
The heavens alight,
My jealous soul
Still owns the
sway of night.
Thro’ all the night I wept forlorn,
Awaiting anxiously the morn;
And tho’ no sunlight strikes on
me,
My bosom burns with jealousy.
The twinkling starlets disappear;
Their radiance made my sorrow clear;
The sun has vanished from my sight,
Turned into water is his light;
What boots it that the glorious sun
From India his course has run,
To bring to Spain the gleam of day,
If from my sight he hides away?
The morn is up,
The heavens are
bright,
My jealous soul
Still owns the
sway of night.”
ADELIFA’S JEALOUSY
Fair Adelifa sees in wrath, kindled by
jealous flames,
Her Abenamar gazed upon by the kind Moorish
dames.
And if they chance to speak to him, or
take him by the hand,
She swoons to see her own beloved with
other ladies stand.
When with companions of his own, the bravest
of his race,
He meets the bull within the ring, and
braves him to his face,
Or if he mount his horse of war, and sallying
from his tent
Engages with his comrades in tilt or tournament,
She sits apart from all the rest, and
when he wins the prize
She smiles in answer to his smile and
devours him with her eyes.
And in the joyous festival and in Alhambra’s
halls,
She follows as he treads the dance at
merry Moorish balls.
And when the tide of battle is rising
o’er the land,
And he leaves his home, obedient to his
honored King’s command,
With tears and lamentation she sees the
warrior go
With arms heroic to subdue the proud presumptuous
foe.
Though ’tis to save his country’s
towers he mounts his fiery steed
She has no cheerful word for him, no blessing
and godspeed;