Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ESPANA DOLOROSA, by AMELIA WOODWARD TRUESDELL


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ESPANA DOLOROSA, by                    
First Line: There were tears in andalusia
Last Line: Beware lest worse befall!
Subject(s): Andalusia, Spain; Death; Funerals; Grief; Spanish-american War (1898); Dead, The; Burials; Sorrow; Sadness


There were tears in Andalusia,
There was wailing in Castile,
Leon was dark with sorrow,
In Aragon the peal
Of dirge funereal sounded;
For now the flag of Spain,
From four hundred years of waving,
Would never rise again
Where the Pearl of the Antilles
Makes the isle of sweet delights,
On the Carribean waters
And Morro's battled heights.

For the Señor Castellanos
With no sceptre in his hand,
Gave the keys of power ancestral
To a hated victor land,
From the Palace of Havana,
Where crime had had its sway;
Where the sins of generations
Bow the shoulders of to-day.

He looked not back in weakness
With a quiver for the past,
Nor upward to the turret
Where an alien flag was cast.
One cried, "España viva!"—
His heart shook with surprise;
They saw one sudden tremor,
One unbrushed tear-drop rise;
But he trod the marble stairway
With a martial step and bold,
Left the Palace of Havana
With its secrets all untold.

Ah, woe to thee, Granada!
Thy sins are at thy door;
The suffering of the ages
Returns to thy own shore.
Hist! thy children's "Miserere,"—
It is history's fate-wrung chimes,
And the blood-sweat of their foreheads
Is the dripping of thy crimes.

Ah, woe is thee, Alhama!
The blood-stain still is there;
Haste, haste to purge thy spirit
With penance and with prayer!

Ai, España! read the writing
Of the hand upon the wall;
Ai, España Dolorosa!
Beware lest worse befall!





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