THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 A POEM 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 
 MDCCCLXVITI 
 
 The Rirht of Translation is reserved 
 
This Work Was originally written in the wititer of 1864-5 J 
 after a visit to Spain in 1867 it was rewritten and amplified. 
 The reader conversant with Spanish poetry will see that in two 
 of the Lyrics an attempt has been made to imitate the trochaic 
 measure and assonance of the Spanish Ballad. 
 
 May 1868. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 TlS the warm South, where Europe spreads her lands 
 
 Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep: 
 
 Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love 
 
 (A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines) 
 
 On the Mid Sea that moans with memories, 
 
 And on the untravelled Ocean, whose vast tides 
 
 Pant dumbly passionate with dreams of youth. 
 
 This river, shadowed by the battlements 
 
 And gleaming silvery towards the northern sky, 
 
 Feeds the famed stream that waters Andalus 
 
 And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air, 
 
 By Cordova and Seville to the bay 
 
 Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood 
 
 Of Guadiana. This deep mountain gorge 
 
 Slopes widening on the olive-plumed plains 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Of fair Granada : one far-stretching arm 
 
 Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights 
 
 Of Alpujarras where the new-bathed Day 
 
 With oriflamme uplifted o'er the peaks 
 
 Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows 
 
 That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars ; 
 
 Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness 
 
 From Almeria's purple-shadowed bay 
 
 Oh to the far-off rocks that gaze and glow — 
 
 On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart 
 
 Of glorious Morisma, gasping now, 
 
 A maimed giant in his agony. 
 
 This town that dips its feet within the stream, 
 
 And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele, 
 
 Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks, 
 
 Is rich Bedmar : 'twas Moorish long ago, 
 
 But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque, 
 
 And bells make Catholic the trembling air. 
 
 The fortress gleams in Spanish sunshine now 
 
 (Tis south a mile before the rays are Moorish) — 
 
 Hereditary jewel, agraffe bright 
 
 On all the many-titled privilege 
 
 Of young Duke Silva. No Castilian knight 
 
 That serves Queen Isabel has higher charge ; 
 
 For near this frontier sits the Moorish king, 
 
 Not Boabdil the waverer, who usurps 
 
 A throne he trembles in, and fawning licks 
 
 The feet of conquerors, but that fierce lion 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 5 
 
 Grisly El Zagal, who has made his lair 
 In Guadix' fort, and rushing thence with strength, 
 Half his own fierceness, half the untainted heart 
 Of mountain bands that fight forholiday, 
 Wastes the fair lands that lie by Alcala, 
 Wreathing his horse's neck with Christian heads. 
 
 To keep the Christian frontier — such high trust 
 
 Is young Duke Silva's ; and the time is great. 
 
 (What times are little ? To the sentinel 
 
 That hour is regal when he mounts on guard.) 
 
 The fifteenth century since the Man Divine 
 
 Taught and was hated in Capernaum 
 
 Is near its end — is falling as a husk 
 
 Away from all the fruit its years have ripened. 
 
 The Moslem faith, now flickering like a torch 
 
 In a night struggle on this shore of Spain, 
 
 Glares, a broad column of advancing flame, 
 
 Along the Danube and the Illyrian shore 
 
 Far into Italy, where eager monks, 
 
 Who watch in dreams and dream the while they 
 
 watch, 
 See Christ grow paler in the baleful light, 
 Crying again the cry of the forsaken. 
 But faith, the stronger for extremity, 
 Becomes prophetic, hears the far-off tread 
 Of western chivalry, sees downward sweep 
 The archangel Michael with the gleaming sword, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And listens for the shriek of hurrying fiends 
 Chased from their revels in God's sanctuary. 
 So trusts the monk, and lifts appealing eyes 
 To the high dome, the Church's firmament, 
 Where the blue light-pierced curtain, rolled away, 
 Reveals the throne and Him who sits thereon. 
 So trust the men whose best hope for the world 
 Is ever that the world is near its end : 
 Impatient of the stars that keep their course 
 And make no pathway for the coming Judge. 
 
 But other futures stir the world's great heart. 
 
 Europe is come to her majority, 
 
 And enters on the vast inheritance 
 
 Won from the tombs of mighty ancestors, 
 
 The seeds, the gold, the gems, the silent harps 
 
 That lay deep buried with the memories 
 
 Of old renown. 
 
 No more, as once in sunny Avignon, 
 
 The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page, 
 
 And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song ; 
 
 For now the old epic voices ring again 
 
 And vibrate with the beat and melody 
 
 Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days. 
 
 The martyred sage, the Attic orator, 
 
 Immortally incarnate, like the gods, 
 
 In spiritual bodies, winged words 
 
 Holding a universe impalpable, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 7 
 
 Find a new audience. For evermore, 
 
 With grander resurrection than was feigned 
 
 Of Attila's fierce Huns, the soul of Greece 
 
 Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form 
 
 Of calmly-joyous beauty, marble-limbed, 
 
 Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its lips, 
 
 Looks mild reproach from out its opened grave 
 
 At creeds of terror ; and the vine-wreathed god 
 
 Rising, a stifled question from the silence, 
 
 Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns. 
 
 The soul of man is widening towards the past : 
 
 No longer hanging at the breast of life 
 
 Feeding in blindness to his parentage — 
 
 Quenching all wonder with Omnipotence, 
 
 Praising a name with indolent piety — 
 
 He spells the record of his long descent, 
 
 More largely conscious of the life that was. 
 
 And from the height that shows where morning shone 
 
 On far-off summits pale and gloomy now, 
 
 The horizon widens round him, and the west 
 
 Looks vast with untracked waves whereon his gaze 
 
 Follows the flight of the swift-vanished bird 
 
 That like the sunken sun is mirrored still 
 
 Upon the yearning soul within the eye. 
 
 And so in C6rdova through patient nights 
 
 Columbus watches, or he sails in dreams 
 
 Between the setting stars and finds new day ; 
 
 Then wakes again to the old weary days, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Girds on the cord and frock of pale Saint Francis, 
 And like him zealous pleads with foolish men. 
 * I ask but for a million maravedis : 
 Give me three caravels to find a world, 
 New shores, new realms, new soldiers for the Cross. 
 Son cosas grandest" Thus he pleads in vain ; 
 Yet faints not utterly, but pleads anew, 
 Thinking, " God means it, and has chosen me." 
 For this man is the pulse of all mankind 
 Feeding an embryo future, offspring strange 
 Of the fond Present, that with mother-prayers 
 And mother-fancies looks for championship 
 Of all her loved beliefs and old-world ways 
 From that young Time she bears within her womb. 
 The sacred places shall be purged again, 
 The Turk converted, and the Holy Church, 
 Like the mild Virgin with the outspread robe, 
 Shall fold all tongues and nations lovingly. 
 
 But since God works by armies, who shall be 
 The modern Cyrus ? Is it France most Christian, 
 Who with his lilies and brocaded knights, 
 French oaths, French vices, and the newest style 
 Of out-puffed sleeve, shall pass from west to east, 
 A winnowing fan to purify the seed 
 For fair millennial harvests soon to come ? 
 Or is not Spain the land of chosen warriors ? — 
 Crusaders consecrated from the womb, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 9 
 
 Carrying the sword-cross stamped upon their souls 
 By the long yearnings of a nation's life, 
 Through all the seven patient centuries 
 Since first Pelayo and his resolute band 
 Trusted the God within their Gothic hearts 
 At Covadunga, and defied Mahound ; 
 Beginning so the Holy War of Spain 
 That now is panting with the eagerness 
 Of labour near its end. The silver cross 
 Glitters o'er Malaga and streams dread light 
 On Moslem galleys, turning all their stores 
 From threats to gifts. What Spanish knight is he 
 Who, living now, holds it not shame to live 
 Apart from that hereditary battle 
 Which needs his sword ? Castilian gentlemen 
 Choose not their task — they choose to do it well. 
 
 The time is great, and greater no man's trust 
 Than his who keeps the fortress for his king, 
 Wearing great honours as some delicate robe 
 Brocaded o'er with names 'twere sin to tarnish. 
 Born de la Cerda, Calatravan knight, 
 Count of Segura, fourth Duke of Bedmar, 
 Offshoot from that high stock of old Castile 
 Whose topmost branch is proud Medina Celi — 
 Such titles with their blazonry are his 
 Who keeps this fortress, sworn Alcayde, 
 Lord of the valley, master of the town, 
 
IO THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Commanding whom he will, himself commanded 
 By Christ his Lord who sees him from the Cross 
 And from bright heaven where the Mother pleads ;- 
 By good Saint James upon the milk-white steed, 
 Who leaves his bliss to fight for chosen Spain ; — 
 By the dead gaze of all his ancestors ; — 
 And by the mystery of his Spanish blood 
 Charged with the awe and glories of the past. 
 
 See now with soldiers in his front and rear 
 He winds at evening through the narrow streets 
 That toward the Castle gate climb devious : 
 His charger, of fine Andalusian stock, 
 An Indian beauty, black but delicate, 
 Is conscious of the herald trumpet note, 
 The gathering glances, and familiar ways 
 That lead fast homeward : she forgets fatigue, 
 And at the light touch of the master's spur 
 Thrills with the zeal to bear him royally, 
 Arches her neck and clambers up the stones 
 As if disdainful of the difficult steep. 
 Night-black the charger, black the rider's plume, 
 But all between is bright with morning hues — 
 Seems ivory and gold and deep blue gems, 
 And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion, 
 All set in jasper : on his surcoat white 
 Glitter the swordbelt and the jewelled hilt, 
 Red on the back and breast the holy cross, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. II 
 
 And 'twixt the helmet and the soft-spun white 
 
 Thick tawny wavelets like the lion's mane 
 
 Turn backward from his brow, pale, wide, erect, 
 
 Shadowing blue eyes — blue as the rain-washed sky 
 
 That braced the early stem of Gothic kings 
 
 He claims for ancestry. A goodly knight, 
 
 A noble caballero, broad of chest 
 
 And long of limb. So much the August sun, 
 
 Now in the west but shooting half its beams 
 
 Past a dark rocky profile toward the plain, 
 
 At winding opportunities across the slope 
 
 Makes suddenly luminous for all who see : 
 
 For women smiling from the terraced roofs ; 
 
 For boys that prone on trucks with head up-propped, 
 
 Lazy and curious, stare irreverent ; 
 
 For men who make obeisance with degrees 
 
 Of good-will shading towards servility, 
 
 Where good-will ends and secret fear begins, 
 
 And curses, too, low-muttered through the teeth, 
 
 Explanatory to the God of Shem. 
 
 Five, grouped within a whitened tavern court 
 Of Moorish fashion, where the trellised vines 
 Purpling above their heads make odorous shade, 
 Note through the open door the passers-by, 
 Getting some rills of novelty to speed 
 The lagging stream of talk and help the wine. 
 'Tis Christian to drink wine : whoso denies 
 
12 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 His flesh at bidding save of Holy Church, 
 Let him beware and take to Christian sins 
 Lest he be taxed with Moslem sanctity. 
 
 The souls are five, the talkers only three. 
 
 (No time, most tainted by wrong faith and rule, 
 
 But holds some listeners and dumb animals.) 
 
 Mine HOST is one : he with the well-arched nose, 
 
 Soft-eyed, fat-handed, loving men for nought 
 
 But his own humour, patting old and young 
 
 Upon the back, and mentioning the cost 
 
 With confidential blandness, as a tax 
 
 That he collected much against his will 
 
 From Spaniards who were all his bosom friends : 
 
 Warranted Christian — else how keep an inn, 
 
 Which calling asks true faith ? though like his wine 
 
 Of cheaper sort, a trifle over-new. 
 
 His father was a convert, chose the chrism 
 
 As men choose physic, kept his chimney warm 
 
 With smokiest wood upon a Saturday, 
 
 Counted his gains and grudges on a chaplet, 
 
 And crossed himself asleep for fear of spies ; 
 
 Trusting the God of Israel would see 
 
 'Twas Christian tyranny that made him base. 
 
 Our host his son was born ten years too soon, 
 
 Had heard his mother call him Ephraim, 
 
 Knew holy things from common, thought it sin 
 
 To feast on days when Israel's children mourned, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 3 
 
 So had to be converted with his sire, 
 To doff the awe he learned as Ephraim, 
 And suit his manners to a Christian name. 
 But infant awe, that unborn breathing thing, 
 Dies with what nourished it, can never rise 
 From the dead womb and walk and seek new pas- 
 ture. 
 Baptism seemed to him a merry game 
 Not tried before, all sacraments a mode 
 Of doing homage for one's property, 
 And all religions a queer human whim 
 Or else a vice, according to degrees : 
 As, 'tis a whim to like your chestnuts hot, 
 Burn your own mouth and draw your face awry, 
 A vice to pelt frogs with them — animals 
 Content to take life coolly. And Lorenzo 
 Would have all lives made easy, even lives 
 Of spiders and inquisitors, yet still 
 Wishing so well to flies and Moors and Jews 
 He rather wished the others easy death ; 
 For loving all men clearly was deferred 
 Till all men loved each other. Such mine Host, 
 With chiselled smile caressing Seneca, 
 The solemn mastiff leaning on his knee. 
 
 His right-hand guest is solemn as the dog, 
 Square-faced and massive : BLASCO is his name, 
 A prosperous silversmith from Aragon ; 
 
14 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 In speech not silvery, rather tuned as notes 
 From a deep vessel made of plenteous iron, 
 Or some great bell of slow but certain swing 
 That, if you only wait, will tell the hour 
 As well as flippant clocks that strike in haste 
 And set off chiming a superfluous tune — 
 Like JUAN there, the spare man with the lute, 
 Who makes you dizzy with his rapid tongue, 
 Whirring athwart your mind with comment swift 
 On speech you would have finished by-and-by, 
 Shooting your bird for you while you are loading, 
 Cheapening your wisdom as a pattern known 
 And spun by any shuttle on demand. 
 Can never sit quite still, too : sees a wasp 
 And kills it with a movement like a flash ; 
 Whistles low notes or seems to thrum his lute 
 As a mere hyphen 'twixt two syllables 
 Of any steadier man ; walks up and down 
 And snuffs the orange flowers and shoots a pea 
 To hit a streak of light let through the awning. 
 Has a queer face : eyes large as plums, a nose 
 Small, round, uneven, like a bit of wax 
 Melted and cooled by chance. Thin-fingered, lithe, 
 And as a squirrel noiseless, startling men 
 Only by quickness. In his speech and look 
 A touch of graceful wildness, as of things 
 Not trained or tamed for uses of the world ; 
 Most like the Fauns that roamed in days of old 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 5 
 
 About the listening whispering woods, and shared 
 The subtler sense of sylvan ears and eyes 
 Undulled by scheming thought, yet joined the 
 
 rout 
 Of men and women on the festal days, 
 And played the syrinx too, and knew love's pains, 
 Turning their anguish into melody. 
 For Juan was a minstrel still, in times 
 When minstrelsy was held a thing outworn. 
 Spirits seem buried and their epitaph 
 Is writ in Latin by severest pens, 
 Yet still they flit above the trodden grave 
 And find new bodies, animating them 
 In quaint and ghostly way with antique souls. 
 So Juan was a troubadour revived, 
 Freshening life's dusty road with babbling rills 
 Of wit and song, living 'mid harnessed men 
 With limbs ungalled by armour, ready so 
 To soothe them weary, and to cheer them sad. 
 Guest at the board, companion in the camp, 
 A crystal mirror to the life around, 
 Flashing the comment keen of simple fact 
 Defined in words ; lending brief lyric voice 
 To grief and sadness ; hardly taking note 
 Of difference betwixt his own and others' ; 
 But rather singing as a listener 
 To the deep moans, the cries, the wild strong joys 
 Of universal Nature, old yet young. 
 
1 6 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Such Juan, the third talker, shimmering bright 
 As butterfly or bird with quickest life. 
 
 The silent ROLDAN has his brightness too, 
 
 But only in his spangles and rosettes. 
 
 His parti-coloured vest, tight-fitting, and his hose, 
 
 Are dulled with old Valencian dust, his eyes 
 
 With straining fifty years at gilded balls 
 
 To catch them dancing, or with brazen looks 
 
 At men and women as he made his jests 
 
 Some thousand times and watched to count the pence 
 
 His wife was gathering. His olive face 
 
 Has an old writing in it, characters 
 
 Stamped deep by grins that had no merriment, 
 
 The soul's rude mark proclaiming all its blank ; 
 
 As on some faces that have long grown old 
 
 In lifting tapers up to forms obscene 
 
 On ancient walls and chuckling with false zest 
 
 To please my lord, who gives the larger fee 
 
 For that hard industry in apishness. 
 
 Roldan would gladly never laugh again ; 
 
 Pensioned, he would be grave as any ox, 
 
 And having beans and crumbs and oil secured 
 
 Would borrow no man's jokes for evermore. 
 
 'Tis harder now because his wife is gone, 
 
 Who had quick feet, and danced to ravishment 
 
 Of every ring jewelled with Spanish eyes, 
 
 But died and left this boy, lame from his birth, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 7 
 
 And sad and obstinate, though when he will 
 He sings God-taught such marrow-thrilling strains 
 As seem the very voice of dying Spring, 
 A flute-like wail that mourns the blossoms gone, 
 And sinks, and is not, like their fragrant breath, 
 With fine transition on the trembling air. 
 He sits as if imprisoned by some fear, 
 Motionless, with wide eyes that seem not made 
 For hungry glancing of a twelve-year' d boy 
 To mark the living thing that he could teaze, 
 But for the gaze of some primeval sadness 
 Dark twin with light in the creative ray. 
 This little PABLO has his spangles too, 
 And large rosettes to hide his poor left foot 
 Rounded like any hoof (his mother thought 
 God willed it so to punish all her sins). 
 
 I said the souls were five — besides the dog. 
 But there was still a sixth, with wrinkled face, 
 Grave and disgusted with all merriment 
 Not less than Roldan. It is Annibal, 
 The experienced monkey who performs the tricks, 
 Jumps through the hoops, and carries round the hat. 
 Once full of sallies and impromptu feats, 
 Now cautions not to light on aught that's new, 
 Lest he be whipped to do it o'er again 
 From A to Z, and make the gentry laugh : 
 A misanthropic monkey, grey and grim, 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Bearing a lot that has no remedy 
 
 For want of concert in the monkey tribe. 
 
 We see the company, above their heads 
 The braided matting, golden as ripe corn, 
 Stretched in a curving strip close by the grapes, 
 Elsewhere rolled back to greet the cooler sky ; 
 A fountain near, vase-shapen and broad-lipped, 
 Where timorous birds alight with tiny feet, 
 And hesitate and bend wise listening ears, 
 And fly away again with undipped beak. 
 On the stone floor the juggler's heaped-up goods, 
 Carpet and hoops, viol and tambourine, 
 Where Annibal sits perched with brows severe, 
 A serious ape whom none take seriously, 
 Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts 
 By hard buffoonery. We see them all, 
 And hear their talk — the talk of Spanish men, 
 With Southern intonation, vowels turned 
 Caressingly between the consonants, 
 Persuasive, willing, with such intervals 
 As music borrows from the wooing birds, 
 That plead with subtly curving, sweet descent — 
 And yet can quarrel, as these Spaniards can. 
 
 JUAN (near the doorway). 
 
 You hear the trumpet ? There's old Ramon's blast 
 No bray but his can shake the air so well. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 9 
 
 He takes his trumpeting as solemnly 
 
 As angel charged to wake the dead ; thinks war 
 
 Was made for trumpeters, and their great art 
 
 Made solely for themselves who understand it. 
 
 His features all have shaped themselves to blowing, 
 
 And when his trumpet's bagged or left at home 
 
 He seems a chattel in a broker's booth, 
 
 A spoutless watering-can, a promise to pay 
 
 No sum particular. O fine old Ramon ! 
 
 The blasts get louder and the clattering hoofs ; 
 
 They crack the ear as well as heaven's thunder 
 
 For owls that listen blinking. There's the banner. 
 
 HOST {joining him : the others follow to the door). 
 
 The Duke has finished reconnoitring, then ? 
 
 We shall hear news. They say he means a sally — 
 
 Would strike El Zagal's Moors as they push home 
 
 Like ants with booty heavier than themselves ; 
 
 Then, joined by other nobles with their bands, 
 
 Lay siege to Guadix. Juan, you're a bird 
 
 That nest within the Castle. What say you ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Nought, I say nought. 'Tis but a toilsome game 
 
 To bet upon that feather Policy, 
 
 And guess where after twice a hundred puffs 
 
 'Twill catch another feather crossing it : 
 
 Guess how the cardinal will blow and how the king ; 
 
20 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 What force my lady's fan has ; how a cough 
 
 Seizing the Padre's throat may raise a gust, 
 
 And how the queen may sigh the feather down. 
 
 Such catching at imaginary threads, 
 
 Such spinning twisted air, is not for me. 
 
 If I should want a game, I'll rather bet 
 
 On racing snails, two large, slow, lingering snails — 
 
 No spurring, equal weights — a chance sublime, 
 
 Nothing to guess at, pure uncertainty. 
 
 Here comes the Duke. They give but feeble shouts. 
 
 And some look sour. 
 
 Host. 
 
 That spoils a fair occasion. 
 Civility brings no conclusions with it, 
 And cheerful Vivas make the moments glide 
 Instead of grating like a rusty wheel. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O they are dullards, kick because they're stung, 
 And bruise a friend to show they hate a wasp. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Best treat your wasp with delicate regard ; 
 When the right moment comes say, " By your leave," 
 Use your heel — so ! and make an end of him. 
 That's if we talked of wasps ; but our young Duke — 
 Spain holds not a more gallant gentleman. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 21 
 
 Live, live, Duke Silva ! Tis a rare smile he has, 
 But seldom seen. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 A true hidalgo's smile, 
 That gives much favour, but beseeches none. 
 His smile is sweetened by his gravity : 
 It comes like dawn upon Sierra snows, 
 Seeming more generous for the coldness gone ; 
 Breaks from the calm — a sudden opening flower 
 On dark deep waters : one moment shrouded close, 
 A mystic shrine, the next a full-rayed star, 
 Thrilling, pulse-quickening as a living word. 
 I'll make a song of that. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Prithee, not now. 
 You'll fall to staring like a wooden saint, 
 And wag your head as it were set on wires. 
 Here's fresh sherbet. Sit, be good company. 
 (To BLASCO) You are a stranger, sir, and cannot know 
 How our Duke's nature suits his princely frame. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Nay, but I marked his spurs — chased cunningly ! 
 A duke should know good gold and silver plate ; 
 Then he will know the quality of mine. 
 I've ware for tables and for altars too, 
 
22 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Our Lady in all sizes, crosses, bells : 
 
 He'll need such weapons full as much as swords 
 
 If he would capture any Moorish town. 
 
 For, let me tell you, when a mosque is cleansed 
 
 Juan. 
 
 The demons fly so thick from sound of bells 
 And smell of incense, you may see the air 
 Streaked as with smoke. Why, they are spirits 
 You may well think how crowded they must be 
 To make a sort of haze. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 I knew not that. 
 Still, they're of smoky nature, demons are ; 
 And since you say so — well, it proves the more 
 The need of bells and censers. Ay, your Duke 
 Sat well : a true hidalgo. I can judge — 
 Of harness specially. I saw the camp, 
 The royal camp at Velez Malaga. 
 'Twas like the court of heaven — such liveries ! 
 And torches carried by the score at night 
 Before the nobles. Sirs, I made a dish 
 To set an emerald in would fit a crown, 
 For Don Alonzo, lord of Aguilar. 
 Your Duke's no whit behind him in his mien 
 Or harness either. But you seem to say 
 The people love him not. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 2$ 
 
 Host. 
 
 They've nought against him. 
 But certain winds will make men's temper bad. 
 When the Solano blows hot venomed breath, . 
 It acts upon men's knives : steel takes to stabbing 
 Which else, with cooler winds, were honest steel, 
 Cutting but garlick. There's a wind just now 
 Blows right from Seville 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Ay, you mean the wind . . . 
 Yes, yes, a wind that's rather hot . . . 
 
 Host. 
 
 With faggots. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 A wind that suits not with our townsmen's blood. 
 Abram, 'tis said, objected to be scorched, 
 And, as the learned Arabs vouch, he gave 
 The antipathy in full to Ishmael. 
 'Tis true, these patriarchs had their oddities. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Oddities ? I'm of their mind, I know. 
 Though, as to Abraham and Ishmael, 
 I'm an old Christian, and owe nought to them 
 
24 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Or any Jew among them. But I know 
 
 We made a stir in Saragossa — we : 
 
 The men of Aragon ring hard — true metal. 
 
 Sirs, I'm no friend to heresy, but then 
 
 A Christian's money is not safe. As how ? 
 
 A lapsing Jew or any heretic 
 
 May owe me twenty ounces : suddenly 
 
 He's prisoned, suffers penalties — 'tis well : 
 
 If men will not believe, 'tis good to make them, 
 
 But let the penalties fall on them alone. 
 
 The Jew is stripped, his goods are confiscate ; 
 
 Now, where, I pray you, go my twenty ounces ? 
 
 God knows, and perhaps the King may, but not I. 
 
 And more, my son may lose his young wife's 
 
 dower 
 Because 'twas promised since her father's soul 
 Fell to wrong thinking. How was I to know ? 
 I could but use my sense and cross myself. 
 Christian is Christian — I give in — but still 
 Taxing is taxing, though you call it holy. 
 We Saragossans liked not this new tax 
 They call the — nonsense, I'm from Aragon ! 
 I speak too bluntly. But, for Holy Church, 
 No man believes more. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Nay, sir, never fear. 
 Good Master Roldan here is no delator. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 25 
 
 ROLDAN {starting from a reverie). 
 
 You speak to me, sirs ? I perform to-night — 
 The Placa Santiago. Twenty tricks, 
 All different. I dance, too. And the boy 
 Sings like a bird. I crave your patronage. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Faith, you shall have it, sir. In travelling 
 I take a little freedom, and am gay. 
 You marked not what I said just now? 
 
 ROLDAN. 
 
 I ? no. 
 I pray your pardon. I've a twinging knee, 
 That makes it hard to listen. You were saying ? 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Nay, it was nought. {Aside to HOST) Is it his deep- 
 ness ? 
 
 Host. 
 
 No. 
 He's deep in nothing but his poverty. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 But 'twas his poverty that made me think . . . 
 
26 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Host. 
 
 His piety might wish to keep the feasts 
 As well as fasts. No fear ; he hears not. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Good. 
 
 I speak my mind about the penalties, 
 
 But, look you, I'm against assassination. 
 
 You know my meaning — Master Arbues, 
 
 The grand Inquisitor in Aragon. 
 
 I knew nought — paid no copper towards the deed. 
 
 But I was there, at prayers, within the church. 
 
 How could I help it ? Why, the saints were there, 
 
 And looked straight on above the altars. I . . . 
 
 Juan. 
 Looked carefully another way. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Why, at my beads. 
 'Twas after midnight, and the canons all 
 Were chanting matins. I was not in church 
 To gape and stare. I saw the martyr kneel : 
 I never liked the look of him alive — 
 He was no martyr then. I thought he made 
 An ugly shadow as he crept athwart 
 The bands of light, then passed within the gloom 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 2*J 
 
 By the broad pillar. 'Twas in our great Seo, 
 
 At Saragossa. The pillars tower so large 
 
 You cross yourself to see them, lest white Death 
 
 Should hide behind their dark. And so it was. 
 
 I looked away again and told my beads 
 
 Unthinkingly ; but still a man has ears ; 
 
 And right across the chanting came a sound 
 
 As if a tree had crashed above the roar 
 
 Of some great torrent. So it seemed to me ; 
 
 For when you listen long and shut your eyes 
 
 Small sounds get thunderous. And he'd a shell 
 
 Like any lobster : a good iron suit 
 
 From top to toe beneath the innocent serge. 
 
 That made the tell-tale sound. But then came 
 
 shrieks. 
 The chanting stopped and turned to rushing feet, 
 And in the midst lay Master Arbues, 
 Felled like an ox. 'Twas wicked butchery. 
 Some honest men had hoped it would have scared 
 The Inquisition out of Aragon. 
 'Twas money thrown away — I would say, crime — 
 Clean thrown away. 
 
 Host. 
 
 That was a pity now. 
 Next to a missing thrust, what irks me most 
 Is a neat well-aimed stroke that kills your man, 
 Yet ends in mischief — as in Aragon. 
 
28 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 It was a lesson to our people here. 
 
 Else there's a monk within our city walls, 
 
 A holy, high-born, stern Dominican, 
 
 They might have made the great mistake to kill. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 What ! is he ? . . . 
 
 Host. 
 
 Yes ; a Master Arbues 
 Of finer quality. The Prior here 
 And uncle to our Duke. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 He will want plate : 
 A holy pillar or a crucifix. 
 But, did you say, he was like Arbues ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 As a black eagle with gold beak and claws 
 
 Is like a raven. Even in his cowl, 
 
 Covered from head to foot, the Prior is known 
 
 From all the black herd round. When he uncovers 
 
 And stands white-frocked, with ivory face, his eyes 
 
 Black-gleaming, black his crown of hair 
 
 Like shredded jasper, he seems less a man 
 
 With struggling aims than pure incarnate Will, 
 
 Fit to subdue rebellious nations, nay, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 29 
 
 That human flesh he breathes in, charged with 
 
 passion 
 Which quivers in his nostril and his lip, 
 But disciplined by long-indwelling will 
 To silent labour in the yoke of law. 
 A truce to thy comparisons, Lorenzo ! 
 Thine is no subtle nose for difference ; 
 'Tis dulled by feigning and civility. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Pooh, thou'rt a poet, crazed with finding words 
 
 May stick to things and seem like qualities. 
 
 No pebble is a pebble in thy hands : 
 
 'Tis a moon out of work, a barren egg, 
 
 Or twenty things that no man sees but thee. 
 
 Our Father Isidor's — a living saint, 
 
 And that is heresy, some townsmen think : 
 
 Saints should be dead, according to the Church. 
 
 My mind is this : the Father is so holy 
 
 Twere sin to wish his soul detained from bliss. 
 
 Easy translation to the realms above, 
 
 The shortest journey to the seventh heaven, 
 
 Is what I'd never grudge him. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Piously said. 
 Look you, I'm dutiful, obey the Church 
 When there's no help for it : I mean to say, 
 
30 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 When Pope and Bishop and all customers 
 
 Order alike. But there be bishops now, 
 
 And were aforetime, who have held it wrong, 
 
 This hurry to convert the Jews. As, how ? 
 
 Your Jew pays tribute to the bishop, say. 
 
 That's good, and must please God, to see the Church 
 
 Maintained in ways that ease the Christian's purse. 
 
 Convert the Jew, and where's the tribute, pray ? 
 
 He lapses, too : 'tis slippery work, conversion : 
 
 And then the holy taxing carries off 
 
 His money at one sweep. No tribute more ! 
 
 He's penitent or burnt, and there's an end. 
 
 Now guess which pleases God . . . 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Whether he likes 
 A well-burnt Jew or well-fed bishop best. 
 
 [While Juan put this problem theologic 
 Entered, with resonant step, another guest — 
 A soldier : all his keenness in his sword, 
 His eloquence in scars upon his cheek, 
 His virtue in much slaying of the Moor : 
 With brow well-creased in horizontal folds 
 To save the space, as having nought to do : 
 Lips prone to whistle whisperingly — no tune, 
 But trotting rhythm : meditative eyes, 
 Most often fixed upon his legs and spurs : 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 31 
 
 Invited much, and held good company : 
 Styled Captain Lopez.] 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 At your service, sirs. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Ha, Lopez ? Why, thou hast a face full-charged 
 As any herald's. What news of the wars ? 
 
 Lopez. 
 Such news as is most bitter on my tongue. 
 
 Juan. 
 Then spit it forth. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Sit, Captain : here's a cup, 
 Fresh-filled. What news? 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 Tis bad. We make no sally : 
 We sit still here and wait whate'er the Moor 
 Shall please to do. 
 
 Host. 
 Some townsmen will be glad. 
 
32 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 Glad, will they be ? But I'm not glad, not I, 
 Nor any Spanish soldier of clean blood. 
 But the Duke's wisdom is to wait a siege 
 Instead of laying one. Therefore — meantime — 
 He will be married straightway. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Ha, ha, ha !. . 
 Thy speech is like an hourglass ; turn it down 
 The other way, 'twill stand as well, and say 
 The Duke will wed, therefore he waits a siege. 
 But what say Don Diego and the Prior? 
 The holy uncle and the fiery Don ? 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 O there be sayings running all abroad 
 
 As thick as nuts o'erturned. No man need lack. 
 
 Some say, 'twas letters changed the Duke's intent : 
 
 From Malaga, says Bias. From Rome, says Quintin. 
 
 From spies at Guadix, says Sebastian. 
 
 Some say, 'tis all a pretext — say, the Duke 
 
 Is but a lapdog hanging on a skirt, 
 
 Turning his eyeballs upward like a monk : 
 
 'Twas Don Diego said that — so says Bias ; 
 
 Last week, he said . . . 
 
the spanish gypsy. 33 
 
 • Juan. 
 
 O do without the "said!" 
 Open thy mouth and pause in lieu of it. 
 I had as lief be pelted with a pea 
 Irregularly in the self-same spot 
 As hear such iteration without rule, 
 Such torture of uncertain certainty. 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 Santiago ! Juan, thou art hard to please. 
 I speak not for my own delighting, I. 
 I can be silent, I. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Nay, sir, speak on ! 
 I like your matter well. I deal in plate. 
 This wedding touches me. Who is the bride ? 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 One that some say the Duke does ill to wed. 
 One that his mother reared — God rest her soul ! — 
 Duchess Diana — she who died last year. 
 A bird picked up away fron any nest. 
 Her name — the Duchess gave it — is Fedalma. 
 No harm in that. But the Duke stoops, they say, 
 In wedding her. And that's the simple truth. 
 
 C 
 
34 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Thy simple truth is but a false opinion : 
 The simple truth of asses who believe 
 Their thistle is the very best of food. 
 Fie, Lopez, thou a Spaniard with a sword 
 Dreamest a Spanish noble ever stoops 
 By doing honour to the maid he loves ! 
 He stoops alone when he dishonours her. 
 
 Lopez. 
 Nay, I said nought against her. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Better not. 
 Else I would challenge thee to fight with wits, 
 And spear thee through and through ere thou couldst 
 
 draw 
 The bluntest word. Yes, yes, consult thy spurs : 
 Spurs are a sign of knighthood, and should tell thee 
 That knightly love is blent with reverence 
 As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue. 
 Don Silva's heart beats to a chivalric tune : 
 He wills no highest-born Castilian dame, 
 Betrothed to highest noble, should be held 
 More sacred than Fedalma. He enshrines 
 Her virgin image for the general worship 
 And for his own — -will guard her from the world, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 35 
 
 Nay, his profaner self, lest he should lose 
 The place of his religion. He does well. 
 Nought can come closer to the poets' strain. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Or farther from their practice, Juan, eh ? 
 If thou'rt a specimen ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Wrong, my Lorenzo ! 
 Touching Fedalma the poor poet plays 
 A finer part even than the noble Duke. 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 By making ditties, singing with round mouth 
 Likest a crowing cock ? Thou meanest that ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Lopez, take physic, thou art getting ill, 
 
 Growing descriptive ; 'tis unnatural. 
 
 I mean, Don Silva's love expects reward, 
 
 Kneels with a heaven to come ; but the poor poet 
 
 Worships without reward, nor hopes to find 
 
 A heaven save in his worship. He adores 
 
 The sweetest woman for her sweetness' sake, 
 
 Joys in the love that was not born for him, 
 
 Because 'tis lovingness, as beggars joy, 
 
 Warming their naked limbs on wayside walls, 
 
36 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To hear a tale of princes and their glory. 
 There's a poor poet (poor, I mean, in coin) 
 Worships Fedalma with so true a love 
 That if her silken robe were changed for rags, 
 And she were driven out to stony wilds 
 Barefoot, a scorned wanderer, he would kiss 
 Her ragged garment's edge, and only ask 
 For leave to be her slave. Digest that, friend, 
 Or let it lie upon thee as a weight 
 To check light thinking of Fedalma. 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 I? 
 
 I think no harm of her ; I thank the saints 
 I wear a sword and peddle not in thinking. 
 'Tis Father Marcos says she'll not confess 
 And loves not holy water ; says her blood 
 Is infidel ; says the Duke's wedding her 
 Is union of light with darkness. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Tush! 
 
 [Now Juan — who by snatches touched his lute 
 
 With soft arpeggio, like a whispered dream 
 
 Of sleeping music, while he spoke of love — 
 
 In jesting anger at the soldier's talk 
 
 Thrummed loud and fast, then faster and more loud, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 37 
 
 Till, as he answered " Tush !" he struck a chord 
 Sudden as whip-crack close by Lopez' ear. 
 Mine host and Blasco smiled, the mastiff barked, 
 Roldan looked up and Annibal looked down, 
 Cautiously neutral in so new a case ; 
 The boy raised longing, listening eyes that seemed 
 An exiled spirit's waiting in strained hope 
 Of voices coming from the distant land. 
 But Lopez bore the assault like any rock : 
 That was not what he drew his sword at — he ! 
 He spoke with neck erect] 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 If that's a hint 
 The company should ask thee for a song, 
 Sing, then ! 
 
 Host. 
 Ay, Juan, sing, and jar no more. 
 Something brand new. Thou'rt wont to make my ear 
 A test of novelties. Hast thou aught fresh ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 As fresh as rain-drops. Here's a Cancion 
 Springs like a tiny mushroom delicate 
 Out of the priest's foul scandal of Fedalma. 
 
 [He preluded with questioning intervals, 
 Rising, then falling just a semitone, 
 
38 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 In minor cadence — sound with poised wing 
 Hovering and quivering towards the needed fall. 
 Then in a voice that shook the willing air 
 With masculine vibration sang this song. 
 
 Should I long that dark were fair ? 
 
 Say, O song ! 
 
 Lacks my love aught, that I should long f 
 
 Dark the night, with breath all flow rs, 
 And tender broken voice that fills 
 With ravishment the listening hours : 
 Whisperings, wooings, 
 Liquid ripples and soft ring-dove cooings 
 In low-toned rhythm that loves aching stills. 
 Dark the night, 
 Yet is she bright, 
 
 For in her dark she brings the mystic star, 
 Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love, 
 From some unknown afar. 
 O radiant Dark ! O darkly-fostered ray ! 
 Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day. 
 
 While Juan sang, all round the tavern court 
 
 Gathered a constellation of black eyes. 
 
 Fat Lola leaned upon the balcony 
 
 With arms that might have pillowed Hercules 
 
 (Who built, 'tis known, the mightiest Spanish towns) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 39 
 
 Thin Alda's face, sad as a wasted passion, 
 
 Leaned o'er the coral-biting baby's ; 'twixt the rails 
 
 The little Pepe showed his two black beads, 
 
 His flat-ringed hair and small Semitic nose 
 
 Complete and tiny as a new-born minnow ; 
 
 Patting his head and holding in her arms 
 
 The baby senior, stood Lorenzo's wife 
 
 All negligent, her kerchief discomposed 
 
 By little clutches, woman's coquetry 
 
 Quite turned to mother's cares and sweet content. 
 
 These on the balcony, while at the door 
 
 Gazed the lank boys and lazy-shouldered men. 
 
 'Tis likely too the rats and insects peeped, 
 
 Being southern Spanish ready for a lounge. 
 
 The singer smiled, as doubtless Orpheus smiled, 
 
 To see the animals both great small, 
 
 The mountainous elephant and scampering mouse, 
 
 Held by the ears in decent audience ; 
 
 Then, when mine host desired the strain once more 
 
 He fell to preluding with rhythmic change 
 
 Of notes recurrent, soft as pattering drops 
 
 That fall from off the eaves in faery dance 
 
 When clouds are breaking ; till at measured pause 
 
 He struck, in rare responsive chords, a refrain.] 
 
 Host. 
 
 Come, then, a gayer romaunt, if thou wilt : 
 
 I quarrel not with change. What say you, Captain ? 
 
40 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 All's one to me. I note no change of tune, 
 Not I, save in the ring of horses' hoofs, 
 Or in the drums and trumpets when they call 
 To action or retreat. I ne'er could see 
 The good of singing. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Why, it passes time — 
 Saves you from getting over-wise : that's good. 
 For, look you, fools are merry here below, 
 Yet they will go to heaven all the same, 
 Having the sacraments ; and, look you, heaven 
 Is a long holiday, and solid men, 
 Used to much business, might be ill at ease 
 Not liking play. And so in travelling 
 I shape myself betimes to idleness 
 And take fools' pleasures . . . 
 
 Host. 
 
 Hark, the song begins ! 
 
 Juan (sings). 
 
 Maiden, crowned with glossy blackness, 
 L ithe as panther forest-roaming } 
 
 Long-armed naiad, when she dances, 
 On a stream of ether floating — 
 
 Bright, bright Fcdalma ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 4 1 
 
 Form all curves like softness drifted, 
 Wave-kissed marble roundly dimpling, 
 
 Far-off music slowly winged. 
 Gently rising, gently sinking — 
 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma ! 
 
 Pure as rain-tear on a rose-leaf, 
 Cloud high-born in noonday spotless, 
 
 Sudden perfect as the dew-bead, 
 Gem of earth and sky begotten — 
 
 Bright, O bright Fedalma ! 
 
 Beauty has no mortal father, 
 
 Holy light her form engendered 
 Out of tremor, yearning, gladness, 
 
 Presage sweet and joy remembered — 
 Child of L ight, Fedalma ! 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Faith, a good song, sung to a stirring tune. 
 I like the words returning in a round ; 
 It gives a sort of sense. Another such ! 
 
 ROLDAN (rising). 
 
 Sirs, you will hear my boy. 'Tis very hard 
 When gentles sing for nought to all the town. 
 How can a poor man live ? And now 'tis time 
 I go to the Placa — who will give me pence 
 When he can hear hidalgos and give nought ? 
 
42 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 True, friend. Be pacified. I'll sing no more. 
 Go thou, and we will follow. Never fear. 
 My voice is common as the ivy leaves, 
 Plucked in all seasons — bears no price ; the boy's 
 Is like the almond blossoms. Ah, he's lame ! 
 
 Host. 
 
 Load him not heavily. Here, Pedro ! help. 
 Go with them to the Placa, take the hoops. 
 The sights will pay thee. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 I'll be there anon, 
 And set the fashion with a good white coin. 
 But let us see as well as hear. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Ay, prithee. 
 Some tricks, a dance. 
 
 Blasco. 
 Yes, 'tis more rational. 
 
 ROLDAN {turning round with the bundle and 
 monkey on his shoulders). 
 
 You shall see all, sirs. There's no man in Spain 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 43 
 
 Knows his art better. I've a twinging knee 
 
 Oft hinders dancing, and the boy is lame. 
 
 But no man's monkey has more tricks than mine. 
 
 [At this high praise the gloomy Annibal, 
 
 Mournful professor of high drollery, 
 
 Seemed to look gloomier, and the little troop 
 
 Went slowly out, escorted from the door 
 
 By all the idlers. From the balcony 
 
 Slowly subsided the black radiance 
 
 Of agate eyes, and broke in chattering sounds, 
 
 Coaxings and trampings, and the small hoarse squeak 
 
 Of Pepe's reed. And our group talked again.] 
 
 Host. 
 
 I'll get this juggler, if he quits him well, 
 
 An audience here as choice as can be lured. 
 
 For me, when a poor devil does his best, 
 
 Tis my delight to soothe his soul with praise. 
 
 What though the best be bad ? remains the good 
 
 Of throwing food to a lean hungry dog. 
 
 I'd give up the best jugglery in life 
 
 To see a miserable juggler pleased. 
 
 But that's my humour. Crowds are malcontent, 
 
 And cruel as the Holy .... Shall we go ? 
 
 All of us now together ? 
 
 Lopez. 
 
 Well, not I. 
 
44 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 I may be there anon, but first I go 
 
 To the lower prison. There is strict command 
 
 That all our gypsy prisoners shall to-night 
 
 Be lodged within the fort. They've forged enough 
 
 Of balls and bullets — used up all the metal. 
 
 At morn to-morrow they must carry stones 
 
 Up the south tower. 'Tis a fine stalwart band, 
 
 Fit for the hardest tasks. Some say, the queen 
 
 Would have the Gypsies banished with the Jews. 
 
 Some say, 'twere better harness them for work. 
 
 They'd feed on any filth and save the Spaniard. 
 
 Some say — but I must go. 'Twill soon be time 
 
 To head the escort. We shall meet again. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Go, sir, with God (exit Lopez). A very proper man, 
 
 And soldierly. But, for this banishment 
 
 Some men are hot on, it ill pleases me. 
 
 The Jews, now (sirs, if any Christian here 
 
 Had Jews for ancestors, I blame him not ; 
 
 We cannot all be Goths of Aragon) — 
 
 Jews are not fit for heaven, but on earth 
 
 They are most useful. 'Tis the same with mules, 
 
 Horses, or oxen, or with any pig 
 
 Except Saint Anthony's. They are useful here 
 
 (The Jews, I mean) though they may go to hell. 
 
 And, look you, useful sins — why Providence 
 
 Sends Jews to do 'em, saving Christian souls. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY, 45 
 
 The very Gypsies, curbed and harnessed well, 
 
 Would make draught cattle, feed on vermin too, 
 
 Cost less than grazing brutes, and turn bad food 
 
 To handsome carcasses ; sweat at the forge 
 
 For little wages, and well-drilled and flogged 
 
 Might work like slaves, some Spaniards looking on. 
 
 I deal in plate, and am no priest to say 
 
 What God may mean, save when he means plain sense ; 
 
 But when he sent the Gypsies wandering 
 
 In punishment because they sheltered not 
 
 Our Lady and Saint Joseph (and no doubt 
 
 Stole the small ass they fled with into Egypt), 
 
 Why send them here ? 'Tis plain he saw the use 
 
 They'd be to Spaniards. Shall we banish them, 
 
 And tell God we know better ? 'Tis a sin. 
 
 They talk of vermin ; but, sirs, vermin large 
 
 Were made to eat the small, or else to eat 
 
 The noxious rubbish, and picked Gypsy men 
 
 Might serve in war to climb, be killed, and fall 
 
 To make an easy ladder. Once I saw 
 
 A Gypsy sorcerer, at a spring and grasp 
 
 Kill one who came to seize him : talk of strength ! 
 
 Nay, swiftness too, for while we crossed ourselves 
 
 He vanished like — say, like . . . 
 
 Juan. 
 
 A swift black snake, 
 Or like a living arrow fledged with will. 
 
46 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Blasco. 
 Why, did you see him, pray ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Not then, but now, 
 As painters see the many in the one. 
 We have a Gypsy in Bedmar whose frame 
 Nature compacted with such fine selection, 
 'Twould yield a dozen types : all Spanish knights, 
 From him who slew Rolando at the pass 
 Up to the mighty Cid ; all deities, 
 Thronging Olympus in fine attitudes ; 
 Or all hell's heroes whom the poet saw 
 Tremble like lions, writhe like demigods. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Pause not yet, Juan — more hyperbole ! 
 Shoot upward still and flare in meteors 
 Before thou sink to earth in dull brown fact. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Nay, give me fact, high shooting suits not me. 
 I never stare to look for soaring larks. 
 What is this Gypsy ? 
 
 Host. 
 
 i 
 
 Chieftain of a band, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 47 
 
 The Moor's allies, whom full a month ago 
 
 Our Duke surprised and brought as captives home. 
 
 He needed smiths, and doubtless the brave Moor 
 
 Has missed some useful scouts and archers too. 
 
 Juan's fantastic pleasure is to watch 
 
 These Gypsies forging, and to hold discourse 
 
 With this great chief, whom he transforms at will 
 
 To sage or warrior, and like the sun 
 
 Plays daily at fallacious alchemy, 
 
 Turns sand to gold and dewy spider-webs 
 
 To myriad rainbows. Still the sand is sand, 
 
 And still in sober shade you see the web. 
 
 'Tis so, I'll wager, with his Gypsy chief — 
 
 A piece of stalwart cunning, nothing more. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 No ! My invention had been all too poor 
 
 To frame this Zarca as I saw him first. 
 
 'Twas when they stripped him. In his chieftain's 
 
 gear, 
 Amidst his men he seemed a royal barb 
 Followed by wild-maned Andalusian colts. 
 He had a necklace of a strange device 
 In finest gold of unknown workmanship, 
 But delicate as Moorish, fit to kiss 
 Fedalma's neck, and play in shadows there. 
 He wore fine mail, a rich-wrought sword and belt, 
 And on his surcoat black a broidered torch, 
 
48 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A pine-branch flaming, grasped by two dark hands. 
 
 But when they stripped him of his ornaments 
 
 It was the baubles lost their grace, not he. 
 
 His eyes, his mouth, his nostril, all inspired 
 
 With scorn that mastered. utterance of scorn, 
 
 With power to check all rage until it turned 
 
 To ordered force, unleashed on chosen prey — 
 
 It seemed the soul within him made his limbs 
 
 And made them grand. The baubles were well gone. 
 
 He stood the more a king, when bared to man. 
 
 BLASCO. 
 
 Maybe. But nakedness is bad for trade, 
 And is not decent. Well-wrought metal, sir, 
 Is not a bauble. Had you seen the camp, 
 The royal camp at Velez Malaga, 
 Ponce de Leon and the other dukes, 
 The king himself and all his thousand knights 
 For bodyguard, 'twould not have left you breath 
 To praise a Gypsy thus. A man's a man ; 
 But when you see a king, you see the work 
 Of many thousand men. King Ferdinand 
 Bears a fine presence, and hath proper limbs ; 
 But what though he were shrunken as a relic ? 
 You'd see the gold and gems that cased him o'er, 
 And all the pages round him in brocade, 
 And all the lords, themselves a sort of kings, 
 Doing him reverence. That strikes an awe 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 49 
 
 Into a common man — especially 
 A judge of plate. 
 
 Host. 
 
 Faith, very wisely said. 
 Purge thy speech, Juan. It is over-full 
 Of this same Gypsy. Praise the Catholic King. 
 And come now, let us see the juggler's skill. 
 
50 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The Placa Santiago. 
 
 'Tis daylight still, but now the golden cross 
 Uplifted by the angel on the dome 
 Stands rayless in calm colour clear-defined 
 Against the northern blue ; from turrets high 
 The flitting splendour sinks with folded wing 
 Dark-hid till morning, and the battlements 
 Wear soft relenting whiteness mellowed o'er 
 By summers generous and winters bland. 
 Now in the east the distance casts its veil 
 And gazes with a deepening earnestness. 
 The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes 
 Of shadow-broken grey ; the rounded hills 
 Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs 
 Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh 
 Of cactus green and blue broad-sworded aloes ; 
 The cypress soaring black above the lines 
 Of white court-walls ; the jointed sugar-canes 
 Pale-golden with their feathers motionless 
 In the warm quiet : — all thought-teaching form 
 Utters itself in firm unshimmering hues. 
 For the great rock has screened the westering sun 
 That still on plains beyond streams vaporous gold 
 Among the branches ; and within Bedmar 
 Has come the time of sweet serenity 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 5 1 
 
 When colour glows unglittering, and the soul 
 
 Of visible things shows silent happiness, 
 
 As that of lovers trusting though apart. 
 
 The ripe-cheeked fruits, the crimson-petalled flowers ; 
 
 The winged life that pausing seems a gem 
 
 Cunningly carven on the dark green leaf; 
 
 The face of man with hues supremely blent 
 
 To difference fine as of a voice 'mid sounds : — 
 
 Each lovely light-dipped thing seems to emerge 
 
 Flushed gravely from baptismal sacrament. 
 
 All beauteous existence rests, yet wakes, 
 
 Lies still, yet conscious, with clear open eyes 
 
 And gentle breath and mild suffused joy. 
 
 'Tis day, but day that falls like melody 
 
 Repeated on a string with graver tones — 
 
 Tones such as linger in a long farewell. 
 
 The Placa widens in the passive air- — 
 
 The Placa Santiago, where the church, 
 
 A mosque converted, shows an eyeless face 
 
 Red-checkered, faded, doing penance still — 
 
 Bearing with Moorish arch the imaged saint, 
 
 Apostle, baron, Spanish warrior, 
 
 Whose charger's hoofs trample the turbaned dead, 
 
 Whose banner with the Cross, the bloody sword, 
 
 Flashes athwart the Moslem's glazing eye, 
 
 And mocks his trust in Allah who forsakes. 
 
 Up to the church the Pla^a gently slopes, 
 
52 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 In shape most like the pious palmer's shell, 
 Girdled with low white houses ; high above 
 Tower the strong fortress and sharp-angled wall 
 And well-flanked castle gate. From o'er the roofs, 
 And from the shadowed patios cool, there spreads 
 The breath of flowers and aromatic leaves 
 Soothing the sense with bliss indefinite — 
 A baseless hope, a glad presentiment, 
 That curves the lip more softly, fills the eye 
 With more indulgent beam. And so it soothes, 
 So gently sways the pulses of the crowd 
 Who make a zone about the central spot 
 Chosen by Roldan for his theatre. 
 Maids with arched eyebrows, delicate-pencilled, dark, 
 Fold their round arms below the kerchief full ; 
 Men shoulder little girls ; and grandames grey, 
 But muscular still, hold babies on their arms ; 
 While mothers keep the stout-legged boys in front 
 Against their skirts, as the Greek pictures old 
 Show the Chief Mother with the Boy divine. 
 Youths keep the places for themselves, and roll 
 Large lazy eyes, and call recumbent dogs 
 (For reasons deep below the reach of thought). 
 The old men cough with purpose, wish to hint 
 Wisdom within that cheapens jugglery, 
 Maintain a neutral air, and knit their brows 
 In observation. None are quarrelsome, 
 Noisy, or very merry ; for their blood 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 53 
 
 Moves slowly into fervour — they rejoice 
 
 Like those dark birds that sweep with heavy wing, 
 
 Cheering their mates with melancholy cries. 
 
 But now the gilded balls begin to play 
 In rhythmic numbers, ruled by practice fine 
 Of eye and muscle : all the juggler's form 
 Consents harmonious in swift-gliding change, 
 Easily forward stretched or backward bent 
 With lightest step and movement circular 
 Round a fixed point : 'tis not the old Roldan now, 
 The dull, hard, weary, miserable man, 
 The soul all parched to languid appetite 
 And memory of desire : 'tis wondrous force 
 That moves in combination multiform 
 Towards conscious ends : 'tis Roldan glorious, 
 Holding all eyes like any meteor, 
 King of the moment save when Annibal 
 Divides the scene and plays the comic part, 
 Gazing with blinking glances up and down, 
 Dancing and throwing nought and catching it, 
 With mimicry as merry as the tasks 
 Of penance-working shades in Tartarus. 
 
 Pablo stands passive, and a space apart, 
 Holding a viol, waiting for command. 
 Music must not be wasted, but must rise 
 As needed climax ; and the audience 
 
54 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Is growing with late comers. Juan now, 
 And the familiar Host, with Blasco broad, 
 Find way made gladly to the inmost round 
 Studded with heads. Lorenzo knits the crowd 
 Into one family by showing all 
 Good-will and recognition. Juan casts 
 His large and rapid-measuring glance around ; 
 But — with faint quivering, transient as a breath 
 Shaking a flame — his eyes make sudden pause 
 Where by the jutting angle of a street 
 Castle-ward leading, stands a female form, 
 . A kerchief pale square-drooping o'er the brow, 
 About her shoulders dim brown serge — in garb 
 Most like a peasant woman from the vale, 
 Who might have lingered after marketing 
 To see the show. What thrill mysterious, 
 Ray-borne from orb to orb of conscious eyes, 
 The swift observing sweep of Juan's glance 
 Arrests an instant, then with prompting fresh 
 Diverts it lastingly? He turns at once 
 To watch the gilded balls, and nod and smile 
 At little round Pepita, blondest maid 
 In all Bedmar — Pepita, fair yet flecked, 
 Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red 
 As breasts of robins stepping on the snow — 
 Who stands in front with little tapping feet, 
 And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed 
 Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 55 
 
 But soon the gilded balls have ceased to play 
 
 And Annibal is leaping through the hoops, 
 
 That turn to twelve, meeting him as he flies 
 
 In the swift circle. Shuddering he leaps, 
 
 But with each spring flies swift and swifter still 
 
 To loud and louder shouts, while the great hoops 
 
 Are changed to smaller. Now the crowd is fired. 
 
 The motion swift, the living victim urged, 
 
 The imminent failure and repeated scape 
 
 Hurry all pulses and intoxicate 
 
 With subtle wine of passion many-mixt. 
 
 'Tis all about a monkey leaping hard 
 
 Till near to gasping ; but it serves as well 
 
 As the great circus or arena dire, 
 
 Where these are lacking. Roldan cautiously 
 
 Slackens the leaps and lays the hoops to rest, 
 
 And Annibal retires with reeling brain 
 
 And backward stagger — pity, he could not smile ! 
 
 Now Roldan spreads his carpet, now he shows 
 Strange metamorphoses : the pebble black 
 Changes to whitest egg within his hand ; 
 A staring rabbit, with retreating ears, 
 Is swallowed by the air and vanishes ; 
 He tells men's thoughts about the shaken dice, 
 Their secret choosings ; makes the white beans pass 
 With causeless act sublime from cup to cup 
 Turned empty on the ground — diablerie 
 
56 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 That pales the girls and puzzles all the boys : 
 These tricks are samples, hinting to the town 
 Roldan's great mastery. He tumbles next, 
 And Annibal is called to mock each feat 
 With arduous comicality and save 
 By rule romantic the great public mind 
 (And Roldan's body) from too serious strain. 
 
 But with the tumbling, lest the feats should fail, 
 
 And so need veiling in a haze of sound, 
 
 Pablo awakes the viol and the bow — 
 
 The masculine bow that draws the woman's heart 
 
 From out the strings and makes them cry, yearn, 
 
 plead, 
 Tremble, exult, with mystic union 
 Of joy acute and tender suffering. 
 To play the viol and discreetly mix 
 Alternate with the bow's keen biting tones 
 The throb responsive to the fingers touch, 
 Was rarest skill that Pablo half had caught 
 From an old blind and wandering Catalan ; 
 The other half was rather heritage 
 From treasure stored by generations past 
 In winding chambers of receptive sense. 
 
 The wingdd sounds exalt the thick-pressed crowd 
 With a new pulse in common, blending all 
 The gazing life into one larger soul 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 57 
 
 With dimly widened consciousness : as waves 
 
 In heightened movement tell of waves far off. 
 
 And the light changes ; westward stationed clouds, 
 
 The sun's ranged outposts, luminous message spread, 
 
 Rousing quiescent things to doff their shade 
 
 And show themselves as added audience. 
 
 Now Pablo, letting fall the eager bow, 
 
 Solicits softer murmurs from the strings, 
 
 And now above them pours a wondrous voice 
 
 (Such as Greek reapers heard in Sicily) 
 
 With wounding rapture in it, like love's arrows ; 
 
 And clear upon- clear air as coloured gems 
 
 Dropped in a crystal cup of water pure, 
 
 Fall words of sadness, simple, lyrical : 
 
 Spring comes hither ; 
 
 Buds the rose ; 
 Roses wither ; 
 
 Sweet spring goes. 
 OJald, would she carry me ! 
 
 Summer soars — 
 
 Wide-winged day 
 White light pours, 
 Flies away. 
 Ojald, would he carry me ! 
 
58 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Soft winds blow, 
 
 Westward born. 
 Onward go 
 
 Tozvard the morn. 
 Ojala, would they carry me ! 
 
 Sweet birds sing 
 O'er the graves, 
 Then take wing 
 O'er the waves. 
 Ojala, would they carry me ! 
 
 When the voice paused and left the viol's note 
 To plead forsaken, 'twas as when a cloud 
 Hiding the sun, makes all the leaves and flowers 
 Shiver. But when with measured change the strings 
 Had taught regret new longing, clear again, 
 Welcome as hope recovered, flowed the voice. 
 
 Warm whispering through the sleiider olive leaves 
 
 Came to me a gentle sound, 
 
 Whispering of a secret found 
 In the clear sunshine 'mid the golden sheaves : 
 Said it was sleeping for me in the mom. 
 
 Called it gladness, called it joy, 
 
 Drew me on — " Come hither, boy " — 
 To where the blue wings 7'ested on the com. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 59 
 
 / thought the gentle sound had whispered true — 
 Thought the little heaven mine, 
 Leaned to clutch the thing divine, 
 
 A 11 d saw the blue wings melt within the blue. 
 
 The long notes linger on the trembling air, 
 
 With subtle penetration enter all 
 
 The myriad corridors of the passionate soul, 
 
 Message-like spread, and answering action rouse. 
 
 Not angular jigs that warm the chilly limbs 
 
 In hoary northern mists, but action curved 
 
 To soft andante strains pitched plaintively. 
 
 Vibrations sympathetic stir all limbs : 
 
 Old men live backward in their dancing prime, 
 
 And move in memory; small legs and arms 
 
 With pleasant agitation purposeless 
 
 Go up and down like pretty fruits in gales. 
 
 All long in common for the expressive act 
 
 Yet wait for it ; as in the olden time 
 
 Men waited for the bard to tell their thought. 
 
 " The dance ! the dance !" is shouted all around. 
 
 Now Pablo lifts the bow, Pepi'ta now, 
 
 Ready as bird that sees the sprinkled corn, 
 
 When Juan nods and smiles, puts forth her foot 
 
 And lifts her arm to wake the castanets. 
 
 Juan advances, too, from out the ring 
 
 And bends to quit his lute ; for now the scene 
 
 Is empty; Roldan weary, gathers pence, 
 
60 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Followed by Annibal with purse and stick. 
 The carpet lies a coloured isle untrod, 
 Inviting feet : " The dance, the dance," resounds, 
 The bow entreats with slow melodic strain, 
 And all the air with expectation yearns. 
 
 Sudden, with gliding motion like a flame 
 
 That through dim vapour makes a path of glory, 
 
 A figure lithe, all white and saffron-robed, 
 
 Flashed right across the circle, and now stood 
 
 With ripened arms uplift and regal head, 
 
 Like some tall flower whose dark and intense heart 
 
 Lies half within a tulip-tinted cup. 
 
 Juan stood fixed and pale; Pepita stepped 
 Backward within the ring : the voices fell 
 From shouts insistent to more passive tones 
 Half meaning welcome, half astonishment. 
 " Lady Fedalma ! — will she dance for us?" 
 
 But she, sole swayed by impulse passionate, 
 
 Feeling all life was music and all eyes 
 
 The warming quickening light that music makes, 
 
 Moved as, in dance religious, Miriam, 
 
 When on the Red Sea shore she raised her voice 
 
 And led the chorus of her people's joy; 
 
 Or as the Trojan maids that reverent sang 
 
 Watching the sorrow-crowned Hecuba : 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 6l 
 
 Moved in slow curves voluminous, gradual, 
 
 Feeling and action flowing into one, 
 
 In Eden's natural taintless marriage-bond ; 
 
 Ardently modest, sensuously pure, 
 
 With young delight that wonders at itself 
 
 And throbs as innocent as opening flowers, 
 
 Knowing not comment — soilless, beautiful. 
 
 The spirit in her gravely glowing face 
 
 With sweet community informs her limbs, 
 
 Filling their fine gradation with the breath 
 
 Of virgin majesty ; as full vowelled words 
 
 Are new impregnate with the master's thought. 
 
 Even the chance-strayed delicate tendrils black, 
 
 That backward 'scape from out her wreathing hair — 
 
 Even the pliant folds that cling transverse 
 
 When with obliquely soaring bend altem 
 
 She seems a goddess quitting earth again — 
 
 Gather expression — a soft undertone 
 
 And resonance exquisite from the grand chord 
 
 Of her harmoniously bodied soul. 
 
 At first a reverential silence guards 
 
 The eager senses of the gazing crowd : 
 
 They hold their breath, and live by seeing her. 
 
 But soon the admiring tension finds relief — 
 
 Sighs of delight, applausive murmurs low, 
 
 And stirrings gentle as of eared corn 
 
 Or seed-bent grasses, when the ocean's breath 
 
62 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Spreads landward. Even Juan is impelled 
 
 By the swift-travelling movement : fear and doubt 
 
 Give way before the hurrying energy ; 
 
 He takes his lute and strikes in fellowship, 
 
 Filling more full the rill of melody 
 
 Raised ever and anon to clearest flood 
 
 By Pablo's voice, that dies away too soon, 
 
 Like the sweet blackbird's fragmentary chant, 
 
 Yet wakes again, with varying rise and fall, 
 
 In songs that seem emergent memories 
 
 Prompting brief utterance — little cancions 
 
 And villancicos, Andalusia-born. 
 
 Pablo {sings). 
 
 It was in the prime 
 
 Of the sweet Spring-time. 
 
 In the linnets throat 
 
 Tre7nbled the love-note, 
 A nd the love-stirred air 
 Thrilled the blossoms there. 
 
 Little shadows, dajiced 
 Each a tiny elf, 
 
 Happy in large light 
 And the thinnest self. 
 
 It was but a minute 
 
 In a far-off Spring, 
 
 But each gentle thing, 
 Sweetly-wooing linnet, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 63 
 
 Soft-thrilled hawthorn tree, 
 Happy shadowy elf 
 With the thinnest self 
 Live still on in me. 
 O the sweet, szveet prime 
 Of the past Spring-time ! 
 
 And still the light is changing : high above 
 Float soft pink clouds ; others with deeper flush 
 Stretch like flamingos bending toward the south. 
 Comes a more solemn brilliance o'er the sky, 
 A meaning more intense upon the air — 
 The inspiration of the dying day. 
 And Juan now, when Pablo's notes subside, 
 Soothes the regretful ear, and breaks the pause 
 With masculine voice in deep antiphony. 
 
 Juan (sings). 
 
 Day is dying ! Float, O song, 
 
 Down the westward river, 
 Requiem chanting to the Day — 
 
 Day, the mighty Giver. 
 
 Pierced by shafts of Time he bleeds, 
 
 Melted rnbies sending 
 Through the river and the sky, 
 
 Earth and heaven blending ; 
 
64 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A 11 the long-drawn earthy banks 
 
 Up to cloud-land lifting : 
 Slow between them drifts the swan, 
 
 ' Twixt two heavens drifting. 
 
 Wings half open, like a flow V 
 
 Inly deeper flushing, 
 Neck and breast as virgins pure — 
 Virgin protidly blushing. 
 
 Day is dying ! Float, O swan, 
 
 Down the ruby river ; 
 Follow, song, in requiem 
 
 To the mighty Giver. 
 
 The exquisite hour, the ardour of the crowd, 
 
 The strains more plenteous, and the gathering might 
 
 Of action passionate where no effort is, 
 
 But self's poor gates open to rushing power 
 
 That blends the inward ebb and outward vast — 
 
 All gathering influences culminate 
 
 And urge Fedalma. Earth and heaven seem one, 
 
 Life a glad trembling on the outer edge 
 
 Of unknown rapture. Swifter now she moves, 
 
 Filling the measure with a double beat 
 
 And widening circle ; now she seems to glow 
 
 With more declared presence, glorified. 
 
 Circling, she lightly bends and lifts on high 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 65 
 
 The multitudinous-sounding tambourine, 
 
 And makes it ring and boom, then lifts it higher 
 
 Stretching her left arm beauteous ; now the crowd 
 
 Exultant shouts, forgetting poverty 
 
 In the rich moment of possessing her. 
 
 But sudden, at one point, the exultant throng 
 Is pushed and hustled, and then thrust apart : 
 Something approaches — something cuts the ring 
 Of jubilant idlers — startling as a streak 
 From alien wounds across the blooming flesh 
 Of careless sporting childhood. 'Tis the band 
 Of Gypsy prisoners. Soldiers lead the van 
 And make sparse flanking guard, aloof surveyed 
 By gallant Lopez, stringent in command. 
 The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one, 
 Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms 
 And savage melancholy in their eyes 
 That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair ; 
 Now they are full in sight, now stretch 
 Right to the centre of the open space. 
 Fedalma now, with gentle wheeling sweep 
 Returning, like the loveliest of the Hours 
 Strayed from her sisters, truant lingering, 
 Faces again the centre, swings again 
 The uplifted tambourine. . . . 
 
 When lo ! with sound 
 Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice 
 
 E 
 
66 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead, 
 Tolls the great passing bell that calls to prayer 
 For souls departed : at the mighty beat 
 It seems the light sinks awe-struck — 'tis the note 
 Of the sun's burial ; speech and action pause ; 
 Religious silence and the holy sign 
 Of everlasting memories (the sign 
 Of death that turned to more diffusive life) 
 Pass o'er the Plaga. Little children gaze 
 With lips apart, and feel the unknown god ; 
 And the most men and women pray. Not all. 
 The soldiers pray ; the Gypsies stand unmoved 
 As pagan statues with proud level gaze. 
 But he who wears a solitary chain 
 Heading the file, has turned to face Fedalma. 
 She motionless, with arm uplifted, guards 
 The tambourine aloft (lest, sudden-lowered, 
 Its trivial jingle mar the duteous pause), 
 Reveres the general prayer, but prays not, stands 
 With level glance meeting that Gypsy's eyes, 
 That seem to her the sadness of the world 
 Rebuking her, the great bell's hidden thought 
 Now first unveiled — the sorrows unredeemed 
 Of races outcast, scorned, and wandering. 
 Why does he look at her ? why she at him ? 
 As if the meeting light between their eyes 
 Made permanent union ? His deep-knit brow, 
 Inflated nostril, scornful lip compressed, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 6? 
 
 Seem a dark hieroglyph of coming fate 
 
 Written before her. Father Isidor 
 
 Had terrible eyes and was her enemy ; 
 
 She knew it and defied him ; all her soul 
 
 Rounded and hardened in its separateness 
 
 When they encountered. But this prisoner — 
 
 This Gypsy, passing, gazing casually — 
 
 Was he her enemy too ? She stood all quelled, 
 
 The impetuous joy that hurried in her veins 
 
 Seemed backward rushing turned to chillest awe, 
 
 Uneasy wonder, and a vague self-doubt. 
 
 The minute brief stretched measureless, dream-filled 
 
 By a dilated new-fraught consciousness. 
 
 Now it was gone ; the pious murmur ceased, 
 
 The Gypsy band moved onward at command 
 
 And careless noises blent confusedly. 
 
 But the ring closed again, and many ears 
 
 Waited for Pablo's music, many eyes 
 
 Turned towards the carpet : it lay bare and dim, 
 
 Twilight was there — the bright Fedalma gone. 
 
68 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A handsome room in the Castle. On a table a 
 rich jewel-casket. 
 
 Silva had doffed his mail and with it all 
 
 The heavier harness of his warlike cares. 
 
 He had not seen Fedalma ; miser-like 
 
 He hoarded through the hour a costlier joy 
 
 By longing oft-repressed. Now it was earned ; 
 
 And with observance wonted he would send 
 
 To ask admission. Spanish gentlemen 
 
 Who wooed fair dames of noble ancestry 
 
 Did homage with rich tunics and slashed sleeves 
 
 And outward-surging linen's costly snow ; 
 
 With broidered scarf transverse, and rosary 
 
 Handsomely wrought to fit high-blooded prayer ; 
 
 So hinting in how deep respect they held 
 
 That self they threw before their lady's feet. 
 
 And Silva — that Fedalma's rate should stand 
 
 No jot below the highest, that her love 
 
 Might seem to all the royal gift it was — 
 
 Turned every trifle in his mien and garb 
 
 To scrupulous language, uttering to the world 
 
 That since she loved him he went carefully, 
 
 Bearing a thing so precious in his hand. 
 
 A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious 
 
 In his acceptance, dreading all delight 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 69 
 
 That speedy dies and turns to carrion : 
 
 His senses much exacting, deep instilled 
 
 With keen imagination's difficult needs ; — 
 
 Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, 
 
 Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, 
 
 Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream 
 
 Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed 
 
 With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. 
 
 Silva was both the lion and the man ; 
 
 First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, 
 
 Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed 
 
 And loosed the prize, paying his blood for nought. 
 
 A nature half-transformed, with qualities 
 
 That oft bewrayed each other, elements 
 
 Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, 
 
 Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. 
 
 Haughty and generous, grave and passionate ; 
 
 With tidal moments of devoutest awe, 
 
 Sinking anon to farthest ebb of doubt ; 
 
 Deliberating ever, till the sting 
 
 Of a recurrent ardour made him rush 
 
 Right against reasons that himself had drilled 
 
 And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed 
 
 Too proudly special for obedience, 
 
 Too subtly pondering for mastery : 
 
 Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, 
 
 Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, 
 
 Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness 
 
yo THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. 
 But look less curiously : life itself 
 May not express us all, may leave the worst 
 And the best too, like tunes in mechanism 
 Never awaked. In various catalogues 
 Objects stand variously. Silva stands 
 As a young Spaniard, handsome, noble, brave, 
 With titles many, high in pedigree ; 
 Or, as a nature quiveringly poised 
 In reach of storms, whose qualities may turn 
 To murdered virtues that still walk as ghosts 
 Within the shuddering soul and shriek remorse ; 
 Or, as a lover .... In the screening time 
 Of purple blossoms, when the petals crowd 
 And softly crush like cherub cheeks in heaven, 
 Who thinks of greenly withered fruit and worms ? 
 O the warm southern spring is beauteous ! 
 And in love's spring all good seems possible : 
 No threats, all promise, brooklets ripple full 
 And bathe the rushes, vicious crawling things 
 Are pretty eggs, the sun shines graciously 
 And parches not, the silent rain beats warm 
 As childhood's kisses, days are young and grow, 
 And earth seems in its sweet beginning time 
 Fresh made for two who live in Paradise. 
 Silva is in love's spring, its freshness breathed 
 Within his soul along the dusty ways 
 While marching homeward ; 'tis around him now 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 71 
 
 As in a garden fenced in for delight, — 
 And he may seek delight. Smiling he lifts 
 A whistle from his belt, but lets it fall 
 Ere it has reached his lips, jarred by the sound 
 Of ushers' knocking, and a voice that craves 
 Admission for the Prior of San Domingo. 
 
 Prior {entering). 
 
 You look perturbed, my son. I thrust myself 
 Between you and some beckoning intent 
 That wears a face more smiling than my own. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Father, enough that you are here. I wait, 
 
 As always, your commands — nay, should have sought 
 
 An early audience. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 To give, I trust, 
 Good reasons for your change of policy ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 Strong reasons, father. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Ay, but good ? 
 I have known reasons strong, but strongly evil. 
 
72 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Tis possible. I but deliver mine 
 
 To your strict judgment. Late despatches sent 
 
 With urgence by the Count of Bavien, 
 
 No hint on my part prompting, with besides 
 
 The testified concurrence of the king 
 
 And our grand master, have made peremptory 
 
 The course which else had been but rational. 
 
 Without the forces furnished by allies 
 
 The siege of Guadix would be madness. More, 
 
 El Zagal has his eyes upon Bedmar : 
 
 Let him attempt it : in three weeks from hence 
 
 The master and the Lord of Aguilar 
 
 Will bring their forces. We shall catch the Moors, 
 
 The last gleaned clusters of their bravest men, 
 
 As in a trap. You have my reasons, father. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 And they sound well. But free-tongued rumour adds 
 
 A pregnant supplement — in substance this : 
 
 That inclination snatches arguments 
 
 To make indulgence seem judicious choice ; 
 
 That you, commanding in God's Holy War, 
 
 Lift prayers to Satan to retard the fight 
 
 And give you time for feasting — wait a siege, 
 
 Call daring enterprise impossible, 
 
 Because you'd marry ! You, a Spanish duke, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 73 
 
 Christ's general, would marry like a clown, 
 Who, selling fodder dearer for the war, 
 Is all the merrier ; nay, like the brutes, 
 Who know no awe to check their appetite, 
 Coupling 'mid heaps of slain, while still in front 
 The battle rages. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Rumour on your lips 
 Is eloquent, father. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Is she true ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Perhaps. 
 
 I seek to justify my public acts 
 And not my private joy. Before the world 
 Enough if I am faithful in command, 
 Betray not by my deeds, swerve from no task 
 My knightly vows constrain me to : herein 
 I ask all men to test me. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Knightly vows ? 
 Is it by their constraint that you must marry ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 Marriage is not a breach of them. I use 
 
74 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A sanctioned liberty .... your pardon, father, 
 I need not teach you what the Church decrees. 
 But facts may weaken texts, and so dry up 
 The fount of eloquence. The Church relaxed 
 Our Order's rule before I took the vows. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Ignoble liberty ! you snatch your rule 
 
 From what God tolerates, not what he loves ? — 
 
 Inquire what lowest offering may suffice, 
 
 Cheapen it meanly to an obolus, 
 
 Then buy and count the coin left in your purse 
 
 For your debauch ? — Measure obedience 
 
 By scantest powers of feeble brethren 
 
 Whom Holy Church indulges ? — Ask great Law, 
 
 The rightful Sovereign of the human soul, 
 
 For what it pardons, not what it commands ? 
 
 O fallen knighthood, penitent of high vows, 
 
 Asking a charter to degrade itself ! 
 
 Such poor apology of rules relaxed 
 
 Blunts not suspicion of that doubleness 
 
 Your enemies tax you with. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Oh, for the rest, 
 Conscience is harder than our enemies, 
 Knows more, accuses with more nicety, 
 Nor needs to question Rumour if we fall 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 75 
 
 Below the perfect model of our thought. 
 I fear no outward arbiter. — You smile ? 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Ay, at the contrast 'twixt your portraiture 
 
 And the true image of your conscience, shown 
 
 As now I see it in your acts. I see 
 
 A drunken sentinel who gives alarm 
 
 At his own shadow, but when scalers snatch 
 
 His weapon from his hand smiles idiot-like 
 
 At games he's dreaming of. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 A parable ! 
 The husk is rough — holds something bitter, doubtless. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Oh, the husk gapes with meaning over-ripe. 
 You boast a conscience that controls your deeds, 
 Watches your knightly armour, guards your rank 
 From stain of treachery — you, helpless slave, 
 Whose will lies nerveless in the clutch of lust — 
 Of blind mad passion — passion itself most helpless, 
 Storm-driven, like the monsters of the sea. 
 O famous conscience ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Pause there ! Leave unsaid 
 
76 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Aught that will match that text. More were too much, 
 
 Even from holy lips. I own no love 
 
 But such as guards my honour, since it guards 
 
 Hers whom I love ! I suffer no foul words 
 
 To stain the gift I lay before her feet ; 
 
 And, being hers, my honour is more safe. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Versemakers' talk ! fit for a world of rhymes, 
 
 Where facts are feigned to tickle idle ears, 
 
 Where good and evil play at tournament 
 
 And end in amity — a world of lies — 
 
 A carnival of words where every year 
 
 Stale falsehoods serve fresh men. Your honour safe ? 
 
 What honour has a man with double bonds ? 
 
 Honour is shifting as the shadows are 
 
 To souls that turn their passions into laws. 
 
 A Christian knight who weds an infidel .... 
 
 DON SlLVA (fiercely). 
 Infidel ! 
 
 Prior. 
 
 May one day spurn the Cross, 
 And call that honour ! — one day find his sword 
 Stained with his brother's blood, and call that honour ! 
 Apostates' honour ? — harlots' chastity ! 
 Renegades' faithfulness ? — Iscariot's ! 
 
the spanish gypsy. jj 
 
 Don Stlva. 
 
 Strong words and burning ; but they scorch not me. 
 Fedalma is a daughter of the Church — 
 Has been baptised and nurtured in the faith. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Ay, as a thousand Jewesses, who yet 
 Are brides of Satan in a robe of flames. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Fedalma is no Jewess, bears no marks 
 That tell of Hebrew blood. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 She bears the marks 
 Of races unbaptised, that never bowed 
 Before the holy signs, were never moved 
 By stirrings of the sacramental gifts. 
 
 Don Silva (scornfully). 
 
 Holy accusers practise palmistry, 
 
 And, other witness lacking, read the skin. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 I read a record deeper than the skin. 
 
 What ! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips 
 
 Descend through generations, and the soul 
 
78 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 That moves within our frame like God in worlds- 
 Convulsing, urging, melting, withering — 
 Imprint no record, leave no documents, 
 Of her great history ? Shall men bequeath 
 The fancies of their palate to their sons, 
 And shall the shudder of restraining awe, 
 The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, 
 Faith's prayerful labour, and the food divine 
 Of fasts ecstatic — shall these pass away 
 Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly ? 
 Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain 
 And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace 
 Of tremors reverent ? — That maiden's blood 
 Is as unchristian as the leopard's. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Say, 
 Unchristian as the Blessed Virgin's blood 
 Before the angel spoke the word, " All hail ! " 
 
 Prior {smiling bitterly). 
 
 Said I not truly ? See, your passion weaves 
 Already blasphemies ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 'Tis you provoke them. 
 
 Prior. 
 I strive, as still the Holy Spirit strives, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 79 
 
 To move the will perverse. But, failing this, 
 God commands other means to save our blood, 
 To save Castilian glory — nay, to save 
 The name of Christ from blot of traitorous deeds. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Of traitorous deeds ! Age, kindred, and your cowl, 
 
 Give an ignoble licence to your tongue. 
 
 As for your threats, fulfil them at your peril. 
 
 'Tis you, not I, will gibbet our great name 
 
 To rot in infamy. If I am strong 
 
 In patience now, trust me, I can be strong 
 
 Then in defiance. 
 
 Prior. 
 
 Miserable man ! 
 Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength 
 Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood ? 
 You are a Christian, with the Christian-awe 
 In every vein. A Spanish noble, born 
 To serve your people and your people's faith. 
 Strong, are you ? Turn your back upon the Cross — 
 Its shadow is before you. Leave your place : 
 Quit the great ranks of knighthood : you will walk 
 For ever with a tortured double self, 
 A self that will be hungry while you feast, 
 Will blush with shame while you are glorified, 
 Will feel the ache and chill of desolation, 
 
80 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Even in the very bosom of your love. 
 Mate yourself with this woman, fit for what ? 
 To make the sport of Moorish palaces, 
 A lewd Herodias .... 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Stop ! no other man, 
 Priest though he were, had had his throat left free 
 For passage of those words. I would have clutched 
 His serpent's neck, and flung him out to hell ! 
 A monk must needs defile the name of love : 
 He knows it but as tempting devils paint it. 
 You think to scare my love from its resolve 
 With arbitrary consequences, strained 
 By rancorous effort from the thinnest motes 
 Of possibility? — cite hideous lists 
 Of sins irrelevant, to frighten me 
 With bugbears' names, as women fright a child ? 
 Poor pallid wisdom, taught by inference 
 From blood-drained life, where phantom terrors rule, 
 And all achievement is to leave undone ! 
 Paint the day dark, make sunshine cold to me, 
 Abolish the earth's fairness, prove it all 
 A fiction of my eyes — then, after that, 
 Profane Fedalma. 
 
 Prior. 
 O there is no need : 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 8 1 
 
 She has profaned herself. Go, raving man, 
 And see her dancing now. Go, see your bride 
 Flaunting her beauties grossly in the gaze 
 Of vulgar idlers — eking out the show 
 Made in the Placa by a mountebank. 
 I hinder you no farther. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It is false ! 
 
 Prior. 
 Go, prove it false, then. 
 
 [Father Isidor 
 Drew on his cowl and turned away. The face 
 That flashed anathemas, in swift eclipse 
 Seemed Silva's vanished confidence. In haste 
 He rushed unsignalled through the corridor 
 To where the Duchess once, Fedalma now, 
 Had residence retired from din of arms — 
 Knocked, opened, found all empty — said 
 With muffled voice, " Fedalma !" — called more loud, 
 More oft on Inez, the old trusted nurse — 
 Then searched the terrace-garden, calling still, 
 But heard no answering sound, and saw no face 
 Save painted faces staring all unmoved 
 By agitated tones. He hurried back, 
 
 F 
 
82 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Giving half-conscious orders as he went 
 To page and usher, that they straight should seek 
 Lady Fedalma ; then with stinging shame 
 Wished himself silent ; reached again the room 
 Where still the Father's menace seemed to hang 
 Thickening the air ; snatched cloak and plumed hat, 
 And grasped, not knowing why, his poniard's hilt ; 
 Then checked himself and said : — ] 
 
 If he spoke truth ! 
 To know were wound enough — to see the truth 
 Were fire upon the wound. It must be false ! 
 His hatred saw amiss, or snatched mistake 
 In other men's report. I am a fool ! 
 But where can she be gone ? gone secretly? 
 And in my absence ? Oh, she meant no wrong ! 
 I am a fool ! — But where can she be gone ? 
 With only Inez ? Oh, she meant no wrong ! 
 I swear she never meant it. There's no wrong 
 But she would make it momentary right 
 By innocence in doing it. . . . 
 
 And yet, 
 What is our certainty? Why, knowing all 
 That is not secret. Mighty confidence ! 
 One pulse of Time makes the base hollow — sends 
 The towering certainty we built so high 
 Toppling in fragments meaningless. What is — 
 What will be — must be — pooh ! they wait the key 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 83 
 
 Of that which is not yet ; all other keys 
 Are made of our conjectures, take their sense 
 From humours fooled by hope, or by despair. 
 Know what is good ? O God, we know not yet 
 If bliss itself is not young misery 
 With fangs swift growing. . . . 
 
 But some outward harm 
 May even now be hurting, grieving her. 
 Oh ! I must search — face shame — if shame be there. 
 Here, Perez ! hasten to Don Alvar — tell him 
 Lady Fedalma must be sought — is lost — 
 Has met, I fear, some mischance. He must send 
 Towards divers points. I go myself to seek 
 First in the town. . . . 
 
 [As Perez oped the door, 
 Then moved aside for passage of the Duke, 
 Fedalma entered, cast away the cloud 
 Of serge and linen, and outbeaming bright, 
 Advanced a pace towards Silva — but then paused, 
 For he had started and retreated ; she, 
 Quick and responsive as the subtle air 
 To change in him, divined that she must wait 
 Until they were alone : they stood and looked. 
 Within the Duke was struggling confluence 
 Of feelings manifold — pride, anger, dread, 
 Meeting in stormy rush with sense secure 
 
84 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 That she was present, with the satisfied thirst 
 
 Of gazing love, with trust inevitable 
 
 As in beneficent virtues of the light 
 
 And all earth's sweetness, that Fedalma's soul 
 
 Was free from blemishing purpose. Yet proud wrath 
 
 Leaped in dark flood above the purer stream 
 
 That strove to drown it : Anger seeks its prey — 
 
 Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, 
 
 Likes not to go off hungry, leaving Love 
 
 To feast on milk and honeycomb at will. 
 
 Silva's heart said, he must be happy soon, 
 
 She being there ; but to be happy — first 
 
 He must be angry, having cause. Yet love 
 
 Shot like a stifled cry of tenderness 
 
 All through the harshness he would fain have given 
 
 To the dear word,] 
 
 Don Silva. 
 Fedalma ! 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 O my Lord ! 
 You are come back, and I was wandering ! 
 
 Don Silva {coldly, but with suppressed agitation). 
 You meant I should be ignorant. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Oh no, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 85 
 
 I should have told you after — not before, 
 Lest you should hinder me. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Then my known wish 
 Can make no hindrance ? 
 
 Fedalma {archly). 
 
 That depends 
 On what the wish may be. You wished me once 
 Not to uncage the birds. I meant to obey : 
 But in a moment something — something stronger, 
 Forced me to let them out. It did no harm. 
 They all came back again — the silly birds ! 
 I told you, after. 
 
 Don Silva {with haughty coldness). 
 
 Will you tell me now 
 What was the prompting stronger than my wish 
 That made you wander ? 
 
 Fedalma {advancing a step towards him, with a 
 sudden look of anxiety). 
 
 Are you angry ? 
 
 Don Silva {smiling bitterly). 
 
 Angry ? 
 A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain 
 To feel much anger. 
 
86 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Fed alma {still more anxiously). 
 
 You — deep-wounded ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Have I not made your place and dignity 
 The very heart of my ambition ? You — 
 No enemy could do it — you alone 
 Can strike it mortally. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, Silva, nay. 
 Has some one told you false ? I only went 
 To see the world with Inez — see the town, 
 The people, everything. It was no harm. 
 I did not mean to dance : it happened so 
 At last . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 O God, it's true, then ! — true that you, 
 A maiden nurtured as rare flowers are, 
 The very air of heaven sifted fine 
 Lest motes should mar your purity, 
 Have flung yourself out on the dusty way 
 For common eyes to see your beauty soiled ! 
 You own it true — you danced upon the Placa ? 
 
 Fedalma {proudly). 
 Yes, it is true. I was not wrong to dance. 
 
 Yes! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 8? 
 
 The air was filled with music, with a song 
 That seemed the voice of the sweet eventide — 
 The glowing light entering through eye and ear — 
 That seemed our love — mine, yours — they are but 
 
 one — 
 Trembling through all my limbs, as fervent words 
 Tremble within my soul and must be spoken. 
 And all the people felt a common joy 
 And shouted for the dance. A brightness soft 
 As of the angels moving down to see 
 Illumined the broad space. The joy, the life 
 Around, within me, were one heaven : I longed 
 To blend them visibly : I longed to dance 
 Before the people — be as mounting flame 
 To all that burned within them ! Nay, I danced ; 
 There was no longing : I but did the deed 
 Being moved to do it. 
 
 (As FEDALMA speaks, she and DON SlLVA are 
 gradually drawn nearer to each other) 
 Oh ! I seemed new-waked 
 To life in unison with a multitude — 
 Feeling my soul upborne by all their souls, 
 Floating within their gladness ! Soon I lost 
 All sense of separateness : Fedalma died 
 As a star dies, and melts into the light. 
 I was not, but joy was, and love and triumph. 
 Nay, my dear lord, I never could do aught 
 But I must feel you present. And once done, 
 
88 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Why, you must love it better than your wish. 
 I pray you, say so — say, it was not wrong ! 
 
 ( While FEDALMA has been making this last 
 appeal, they have gradually come close 
 together, and at last embrace) 
 
 DON SlLVA {holding her hands). 
 
 Dangerous rebel ! if the world without 
 
 Were pure as that within . . . but 'tis a book 
 
 Wherein you only read the poesy 
 
 And miss all wicked meanings. Hence the need 
 
 For trust — obedience — call it what you will — 
 
 Towards him whose life will be your guard — towards 
 
 me 
 Who now am soon to be your husband. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Yes! 
 That very thing that when I am your wife 
 I shall be something different, — shall be 
 I know not what, a duchess with new thoughts — 
 For nobles never think like common men, 
 Nor wives like maidens (Oh, you wot not yet 
 How much I note, with all my ignorance) — 
 That very thing has made me more resolve 
 To have my will before I am your wife. 
 How can the Duchess ever satisfy 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 89 
 
 Fedalma's unwed eyes ? and so to-day 
 I scolded Inez till she cried and went. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It was a guilty weakness : she knows well 
 That since you pleaded to be left more free 
 From tedious tendance and control of dames 
 Whose rank matched better with your destiny, 
 Her charge — my trust — was weightier. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, my lord, 
 You must not blame her, dear old nurse. She cried. 
 Why, you would have consented too, at last. 
 I said such things ! I was resolved to go, 
 And see the streets, the shops, the men at work, 
 The women, little children — everything, 
 Just as it is when nobody looks on. 
 And I have done it ! We were out four hours. 
 I feel so wise. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Had you but seen the town, 
 You innocent naughtiness, not shown yourself — 
 Shown yourself dancing — you bewilder me ! — 
 Frustrate my judgment with strange negatives 
 That seem like poverty, and yet are wealth 
 In precious womanliness, beyond the dower 
 
90 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Of other women : wealth in virgin gold, 
 Outweighing all their petty currency. 
 You daring modesty ! You shrink no more 
 From gazing men than from the gazing flowers 
 That, dreaming sunshine, open as you pass. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No, I should like the world to look at me 
 
 With eyes of love that make a second day. 
 
 I think your eyes would keep the life in me 
 
 Though I had nought to feed on else. Their blue 
 
 Is better than the heavens' — holds more love 
 
 For me, Fedalma — is a little heaven 
 
 For this one little world that looks up now. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 O precious little world ! you make the heaven 
 As the earth makes the sky. But, dear, all eyes, 
 Though looking even on you, have not a glance 
 That cherishes .... 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Ah no, I meant to tell you — 
 Tell how my dancing ended with a pang. 
 There came a man, one among many more, 
 But he came first, with iron on his limbs. 
 And when the bell tolled, and the people prayed, 
 And I stood pausing — then he looked at me. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 9 1 
 
 O Silva, such a man ! I thought he rose 
 From the dark place of long-imprisoned souls, 
 To say that Christ had never come to them. 
 It was a look to shame a seraph's joy 
 And make him sad in heaven. It found me there — 
 Seemed to have travelled far to find me there 
 And grasp me — claim this festal life of mine 
 As heritage of sorrow, chill my blood 
 With the cold iron of some unknown bonds. 
 The gladness hurrying full within my veins 
 Was sudden frozen, and I danced no more. 
 But seeing you let loose the stream of joy, 
 Mingling the present with the sweetest past. 
 Yet, Silva, still I see him. Who is he ? 
 Who are those prisoners with him ? Are they 
 Moors ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, they are Gypsies, strong and cunning knaves, 
 A double gain to us by the Moors' loss : 
 The man you mean — their chief — is an ally 
 The infidel will miss. His look might chase 
 A herd of monks, and make them fly more swift 
 Than from St Jerome's lion. Such vague fear, 
 Such bird-like tremors when that savage glance 
 Turned full upon you in your height of joy 
 Was natural, was not worth emphasis. 
 Forget it, dear. This hour is worth whole days 
 
92 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 When we are sundered. Danger urges us 
 To quick resolve. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 What danger ? What resolve ? 
 I never felt chill shadow in my heart 
 Until this sunset. What is it threatens us ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 A dark enmity 
 Plots how to sever us. And our defence 
 Is speedy marriage, secretly achieved, 
 Then publicly declared. Beseech you, dear, 
 Grant me this confidence ; do my will in this, 
 Trusting the reasons why I overset 
 All my own airy building raised so high 
 Of bridal honours, marking when you step 
 From off your maiden throne to come to me 
 And bear the yoke of love. There is great need. 
 I hastened home, carrying this prayer to you 
 Within my heart. The bishop is my friend, 
 Furthers our marriage, holds in enmity — 
 Some whom we love not and who love not us. 
 By this night's moon our priest will be despatched 
 From Jaen. I shall march an escort strong 
 To meet him. Ere a second sun from this 
 Has risen — you consenting — we may wed. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 93 
 
 Fedalma. 
 None knowing that we wed ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Beforehand none 
 Save Inez and Don Alvar. But the vows 
 Once safely binding us, my household all 
 Shall know you as their Duchess. No man then 
 Can aim a blow at you but through my breast, 
 And what stains. you must stain our ancient name ; 
 If any hate you I will take his hate 
 And wear it as a glove upon my helm ; 
 Nay, God himself will never have the power 
 To strike you solely and leave me unhurt, 
 He having made us one. Now put the seal 
 Of your dear lips on that. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 A solemn kiss ? — 
 Such as I gave you when you came that day 
 From C6rdova, when first we said we loved ? 
 When you had left the ladies of the court 
 For thirst to see me ; and you told me so ; 
 And then I seemed to know why I had lived. 
 I never knew before. A kiss like that ? 
 
94 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yes, yes, you face divine ! When was our kiss 
 Like any other? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, I cannot tell 
 What other kisses are. But that one kiss 
 Remains upon my lips. The angels, spirits, 
 Creatures with finer sense, may see it there. 
 And now another kiss that will not die, 
 Saying, to-morrow morning I shall be — 
 Your wife ! 
 
 {They kiss, and pause a moment, looking ear- 
 nestly in each other's eyes. Then Fedalma, 
 breaking away from DON SlLVA, stands 
 at a little distance from him with a look of 
 roguish delight) 
 Now I am glad I saw the town to-day 
 Before I am a Duchess — glad I gave 
 This poor Fedalma all her wish. For once, 
 Long years ago, I cried when Inez said, 
 " You are no more a little girl ; " I grieved 
 To part for ever from that little girl 
 And all her happy world so near the ground. 
 It must be sad to outlive aught we love. 
 So I shall grieve a little for these days 
 Of poor unwed Fedalma. Oh, they are sweet, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 95 
 
 And none will come just like them. Perhaps the wind 
 Wails so in winter for the summers dead, 
 And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries 
 For what has been and is not. Are they, Silva ? 
 
 (She comes nearer to him again, and lays her 
 
 hand on his arm, looking up at him with 
 
 melaizcholy.) 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Why, dearest, you began in merriment, 
 
 And end as sadly as a widowed bird. 
 
 Some touch mysterious has new-tuned your soul 
 
 To melancholy sequence. You soared high 
 
 In that wild flight of rapture when you danced, 
 
 And now you droop. Tis arbitrary grief, 
 
 Surfeit of happiness, that mourns for loss 
 
 Of unwed love, which does but die like seed 
 
 For fuller harvest of our tenderness. 
 
 We in our wedded life shall know no loss. 
 
 We shall new-date our years. What went before 
 
 Will be the time of promise, shadows, dreams ; 
 
 But this, full revelation of great love. 
 
 For rivers blent take in a broader heaven, 
 
 And we shall blend our souls. Away with grief ! 
 
 When this dear head shall wear the double crown 
 
 Of wife and Duchess — spiritually crowned 
 
 With sworn espousal before God and man — 
 
 Visibly crowned with jewels that bespeak 
 
g6 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The chosen sharer of my heritage — 
 My love will gather perfectness, as thoughts 
 That nourish us to magnanimity 
 Grow perfect with more perfect utterance, 
 Gathering full-shapen strength. And then these 
 gems, 
 
 (Don Silva draws Fed alma towards the 
 jewel-casket on the table, and opens it.) 
 Helping the utterance of my soul's full choice, 
 Will be the words made richer by just use, 
 And have new meaning in their lustrousness. 
 You know these jewels ; they are precious signs 
 Of long-transmitted honour, heightened still 
 By worthy wearing ; and I give them you — 
 Ask you to take them — place our house's trust 
 In her sure keeping whom my heart has found 
 Worthiest, most beauteous. These rubies — see — 
 Were falsely placed if not upon your brow. 
 
 (Fedalma, while Don Silva holds open the 
 casket, bends over it, looking at the jewels 
 with delight) 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Ah, I remember them. In childish days 
 I felt as if they were alive and breathed. 
 I used to sit with awe and look at them. 
 And now they will be mine ! I'll put them on. 
 Help me, my lord, and you shall see me now 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 97 
 
 Somewhat as I shall look at Court with you, 
 That we may know if I shall bear them well. 
 I have a fear sometimes : I think your love 
 Has never paused within your eyes to look, 
 And only passes through them into mine. 
 But when the Court is looking, and the queen, 
 Your eyes will follow theirs. Oh, if you saw 
 That I was other than you wished — 'twere death ! 
 
 DON SlLVA {taking tip a jeivcl and placing it 
 against her ear). 
 
 Nay, let us try. Take out your ear-ring, sweet. 
 This ruby glows with longing for your ear. 
 
 FEDALMA (taking out her ear-rings, and then 
 lifting up the other jewels, one by one). 
 
 Pray, fasten in the rubies. 
 
 (DON SlLVA begins to put in the ear-ring) 
 I was right ! 
 These gems have life in them : their colours speak, 
 Say what words fail of. So do many things — 
 The scent of jasmine, and the fountain's plash, 
 The moving shadows on the far-off hills, 
 The slanting moonlight and our clasping hands. 
 O Silva, there's an ocean round our words 
 That overflows and drowns them. Do you know 
 Sometimes when we sit silent, and the air 
 
 G 
 
98 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Breathes gently on us from the orange-trees, 
 It seems that with the whisper of a word 
 Our souls must shrink, get poorer, more apart. 
 
 Is it not true ? 
 
 ■ 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yes, dearest, it is true. 
 Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
 Of the unspoken : even your loved words 
 Float in the larger meaning of your voice 
 As something dimmer. 
 
 (He is still trying in vain to fasten the second 
 ear-ring, while she has stooped again over 
 the casket}) 
 
 Fedalma {raising her head). 
 
 Ah ! your lordly hands 
 Will never fix that jewel. Let me try. 
 Women's small finger-tips have eyes. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, no ! 
 I like the task, only you must be still. 
 
 (She stands perfectly still, clasping her hands 
 together while he fastens the second ear- 
 ring. Suddenly a clanking noise is Jieard 
 without.) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 99 
 
 Fed ALMA {starting with an expression of pain). 
 
 What is that sound ? — that jarring cruel sound ? 
 Tis there — outside. 
 
 (She tries to start away towards the window, 
 but DON SlLVA detains her) 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 O heed it not, it comes 
 From workmen in the outer gallery. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 It is the sound of fetters ; sound of work 
 
 Is not so dismal. Hark, they pass along ! 
 
 I know it is those Gypsy prisoners. 
 
 I saw them, heard their chains. O horrible, 
 
 To be in chains ! Why, I with all my bliss 
 
 Have longed sometimes to fly and be at large ; 
 
 Have felt imprisoned in my luxury 
 
 With servants for my gaolers. O my lord, 
 
 Do you not wish the world were different ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It will be different when this war has ceased. 
 You, wedding me, will make it different, 
 Making one life more perfect. 
 
ioo the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 That is true ! 
 And I shall beg much kindness at your hands 
 For those who are less happy than ourselves. — 
 {Brightening) Oh I shall rule you ! ask for many things 
 Before the world, which you will not deny 
 For very pride, lest men should say, " The Duke 
 Holds lightly by his Duchess ; he repents 
 His humble choice." 
 
 {She breaks away from him and returns to the 
 jewels, taking up a necklace, and clasping 
 it on her neck, while he takes a circlet of 
 diamonds and rubies and raises it towards 
 her head as he speaks) 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Doubtless, I shall persist 
 In loving you, to disappoint the world ; 
 Out of pure obstinacy feel myself 
 Happiest of men. Now, take the coronet. 
 
 {He places the circlet on her head.) 
 The diamonds want more light. See, from this lamp 
 I can set tapers burning. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Tell me, now, 
 When all these cruel wars are at an end, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. IOI 
 
 And when we go to Court at Cordova, 
 Or Seville, or Toledo — wait awhile, 
 I must be farther off for you to see — 
 
 {She retreats to a distance from him> and then 
 advances slowly) 
 Now think (I would the tapers gave more light!) 
 If when you show me at the tournaments 
 Among the other ladies, they will say, 
 " Duke Silva is well matched. His bride was nought, 
 Was some poor foster-child, no man knows what ; 
 Yet is her carriage noble, all her robes 
 Are worn with grace: she might have been well born." 
 Will they say so? Think now we are at Court, 
 And all eyes bent on me. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Fear not, my Duchess ! 
 Some knight who loves may say his lady-love 
 Is fairer, being fairest. None can say 
 Don Silva's bride might better fit her rank. 
 You will make rank seem natural as kind, 
 As eagle's plumage or the lion's might. 
 A crown upon your brow would seem God-made. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Then I am glad ! I shall try on to-night 
 The other jewels — have the tapers lit. 
 And see the diamonds sparkle. 
 
102 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 {She goes to the casket again) 
 Here is gold — 
 A necklace of pure gold — most finely wrought. 
 
 (She takes out a large gold necklace and holds it 
 up before her, then turns to Don SlLVA.) 
 But this is one that you have worn, my lord ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, love, I never wore it. Lay it down. 
 
 (He puts the necklace gently out of her hand, 
 
 then joins both her hands and holds them 
 
 up between his own) 
 You must not look at jewels any more, 
 But look at me. 
 
 Fedalma (looking up at him). 
 
 O you dear heaven ! 
 I should see nought if you were gone. 'Tis true 
 My mind is too much given to gauds — to things 
 That fetter thought within this narrow space. 
 That comes of fear. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 What fear? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Fear of myself. 
 For when I walk upon the battlements 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 103 
 
 And see the river travelling toward the plain, 
 The mountains screening all the world beyond, 
 A longing comes that haunts me in my dreams — 
 Dreams where I seem to spring from off the walls, 
 And fly far, far away, until at last 
 I find myself alone among the rocks, 
 Remember then that I have left you — try 
 To fly back to you — and my wings are gone ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 A wicked dream ! If ever I left you, 
 
 Even in dreams, it was some demon dragged me, 
 
 And with fierce struggles I awaked myself. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 It is a hateful dream, and when it comes — 
 
 I mean, when in my waking hours there comes 
 
 That longing to be free, I am afraid : 
 
 I run down to my chamber, plait my hair, 
 
 Weave colours in it, lay out all my gauds, 
 
 And in my mind make new ones prettier. 
 
 You see I have two minds, and both are foolish. 
 
 Sometimes a torrent rushing through my soul 
 
 Escapes in wild strange wishes ; presently, 
 
 It dwindles to a little babbling rill 
 
 And plays among the pebbles and the flowers. 
 
 Inez will have it I lack broidery, 
 
 Says nought else gives content to noble maids. 
 
104 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 But I have never broidered — never will. 
 
 No, when I am a Duchess and a wife 
 
 I shall ride forth — may I not ? — by your side. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yes, you shall ride upon a palfrey, black 
 To match Bavieca. Not Queen Isabel 
 Will be a sight more gladdening to men's eyes 
 Than my dark queen Fedalma. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Ah, but you, 
 You are my king, and I shall tremble still 
 With some great fear that throbs within my love. 
 Does your love fear ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Ah, yes ! all preciousness 
 To mortal hearts is guarded by a fear. 
 All love fears loss, and most that loss supreme, 
 Its own perfection — seeing, feeling change 
 From high to lower, dearer to less dear. 
 Can love be careless? If we lost our love 
 What should we find ? — with this sweet Past torn off, 
 Our lives deep scarred just where their beauty lay? 
 The best we found thenceforth were still a worse : 
 The only better is a Past that lives 
 On through an added Present, stretching still 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 105 
 
 In hope unchecked by shaming memories 
 To life's last breath. And so I tremble too 
 Before my queen Fedalma. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 That is just. 
 'Twere hard of Love to make us women fear 
 And leave you bold. Yet Love is not quite even. 
 For feeble creatures, little birds and fawns, 
 Are shaken more by fear, while large strong things 
 Can bear it stoutly. So we women still 
 Are not well dealt with. Yet would I choose to be 
 Fedalma loving Silva. You, my lord, 
 Hold the worse share, since you must love poor me. 
 But is it what we love, or how we love, 
 That makes true good ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 O subtlety! for me 
 'Tis what I love determines how I love. 
 The goddess with pure rites reveals herself 
 And makes pure worship. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Do you worship me ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Ay, with that best of worship which adores 
 Goodness adorable. 
 
106 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Fedalma {archly). 
 
 Goodness obedient, 
 Doing your will, devoutest worshipper ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yes — listening to this prayer. This very night 
 I shall go forth. And you will rise with day 
 And wait for me ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Yes. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I shall surely come. 
 And then we shall be married. Now I go 
 To audience fixed in Abderahman's tower. 
 Farewell, love ! 
 
 ( They embrace.) 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Some chill dread possesses me ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Oh, confidence has oft been evil augury, 
 
 So dread may hold a promise. Sweet, farewell ! 
 
 I shall send tendance as I pass, to bear 
 
 This casket to your chamber. — One more kiss. 
 
 (Exit.) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 07 
 
 Fedalma (when Don Silva is gone, returning 
 to the casket, and looking dreamily at the 
 jewels). 
 
 Yes, now that good seems less impossible ! 
 
 Now it seems true that I shall be his wife, 
 
 Be ever by his side, and make a part 
 
 In all his purposes 
 
 These rubies greet me Duchess. How they glow ! 
 
 Their prisoned souls are throbbing like my own. 
 
 Perchance they loved once, were ambitious, proud ; 
 
 Or do they only dream of wider life, 
 
 Ache from intenseness, yearn to burst the wall 
 
 Compact of crystal splendour, and to flood 
 
 Some wider space with glory ? Poor, poor gems ! 
 
 We must be patient in our prison-house, 
 
 And find our space in loving. Pray you, love me. 
 
 Let us be glad together. And you, gold — 
 
 {She takes up the gold necklace) 
 
 You wondrous necklace — will you love me too, 
 
 And be my amulet to keep me safe 
 
 From eyes that hurt ? 
 
 (She spreads out the necklace, meaning to clasp 
 it on her neck. Then pauses, startled, hold- 
 ing it before her.) 
 
 Why, it is magical ! 
 
 He says he never wore it — yet these lines — 
 
 Nay, if he had, I should remember well 
 
108 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 'Twas he, no other. And these twisted lines — 
 
 They seem to speak to me as writing would, 
 
 To bring a message from the dead, dead past. 
 
 What is their secret ? Are they characters ? 
 
 I never learned them ; yet they stir some sense 
 
 That once I dreamed — I have forgotten what. 
 
 Or was it life ? Perhaps I lived before 
 
 In some strange world where first my soul was shaped, 
 
 And all this passionate love, and joy, and pain, 
 
 That come, I know not whence, and sway my deeds, 
 
 Are dim yet mastering memories, blind yet strong, 
 
 That this world stirs within me ; as this chain 
 
 Stirs some strange certainty of visions gone, 
 
 And all my mind is as an eye that stares 
 
 Into the darkness painfully. 
 
 ( While FEDALMA has been looking at the neck- 
 lace, Juan has entered, and finding himself 
 unobserved by her, says at last,) 
 
 Sefiora ! 
 
 FEDALMA starts, and gathering the necklace 
 together, turns round — 
 
 Oh, Juan, it is you ! 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I met the Duke — 
 Had waited long without, no matter why — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 109 
 
 And when he ordered one to wait on you 
 And carry forth a burthen you would give, 
 I prayed for leave to be the servitor. 
 Don Silva owes me twenty granted wishes 
 That I have never tendered, lacking aught 
 That I could wish for and a Duke could grant ; 
 But this one wish to serve you, weighs as much 
 As twenty other longings. 
 
 Fedalma (smiling). 
 
 That sounds well. 
 You turn your speeches prettily as songs. 
 But I will not forget the many days 
 You have neglected me. Your pupil learns 
 But little from you now. Her studies flag. 
 The Duke says, " That is idle Juan's way : 
 Poets must rove — are honey-sucking birds 
 And know not constancy." Said he quite true ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 O lady, constancy has kind and rank. 
 
 One man's is lordly, plump, and bravely clad, 
 
 Holds its head high, and tells the world its name : 
 
 Another man's is beggared, must go bare, 
 
 And shiver through the world, the jest of all, 
 
 But that it puts the motley on, and plays 
 
 Itself the jester. But I see you hold 
 
 The Gypsy's necklace : it is quaintly wrought. 
 
ho the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 The Gypsy's ? Do you know its history ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 No farther back than when I saw it taken 
 From off its wearer's neck — the Gypsy chief's. 
 
 Fedalma {eagerly). 
 
 What ! he who paused, at tolling of the bell, 
 Before me in the Pla^a ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Yes, I saw 
 His look fixed on you. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Know you aught of him ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Something and nothing — as I know the sky, 
 
 Or some great story of the olden time 
 
 That hides a secret. I have oft talked with him. 
 
 He seems to say much, yet is but a wizard 
 
 Who draws down rain by sprinkling ; throws me out 
 
 Some pregnant text that urges comment ; casts 
 
 A sharp-hooked question, baited with such skill 
 
 It needs must catch the answer. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. Ill 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 It is hard 
 That such a man should be a prisoner — 
 Be chained to work. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Oh, he is dangerous ! 
 Granada with this Zarca for a king 
 Might still maim Christendom. He is of those 
 Who steal the keys from snoring Destiny 
 And make the prophets lie. A Gypsy, too, 
 Suckled by hunted beasts, whose mother-milk 
 Has filled his veins with hate. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 I thought his eyes 
 Spoke not of hatred — seemed to say he bore 
 The pain of those who never could be saved. 
 What if the Gypsies are but savage beasts 
 And must be hunted ? — let them be set free, 
 Have benefit of chase, or stand at bay 
 And fight for life and offspring. Prisoners ! 
 Oh ! they have made their fires beside the streams, 
 Their walls have been the rocks, the pillared pines, 
 Their roof the living sky that breathes with light : 
 They may well hate a cage, like strong-winged birds, 
 
112 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Like me, who have no wings, but only wishes. 
 I will beseech the Duke to set them free. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Pardon me, lady, if I seem to warn, 
 Or try to play the sage. What if the Duke 
 Loved not to hear of Gypsies ? if their name 
 Were poisoned for him once, being used amiss ? 
 I speak not as of fact. Our nimble souls 
 Can spin an insubstantial universe 
 Suiting our mood, and call it possible, 
 Sooner than see one grain with eye exact 
 And give strict record of it. Yet by chance 
 Our fancies may be truth and make us seers. 
 Tis a rare teeming world, so harvest-full, 
 Even guessing ignorance may pluck some fruit. 
 Note what I say no farther than will stead 
 The siege you lay. I would not seem to tell 
 Aught that the Duke may think and yet withhold : 
 It were a trespass in me. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Fear not, Juan. 
 Your words bring daylight with them when you speak. 
 I understand your care. But I am brave — 
 Oh ! and so cunning ! — always I prevail. 
 Now, honoured Troubadour, if you will be 
 Your pupil's servant, bear this casket hence. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 113 
 
 Nay, not the necklace : it is hard to place. 
 Pray go before me ; Inez will be there. 
 
 (Exit Juan with the casket) 
 
 Fed ALMA {looking again at the necklace). 
 
 It is his past clings to you, not my own. 
 
 If we have each our angels, good and bad, 
 
 Fates, separate from ourselves, who act for us 
 
 When we are blind, or sleep, then this man's fate, 
 
 Hovering about the thing he used to wear, 
 
 Has laid its grasp on mine, appealingly. 
 
 Dangerous, is he ? — well, a Spanish knight 
 
 Would have his enemy strong — defy, not bind him. 
 
 I can dare all things when my soul is moved 
 
 By something hidden that possesses me. 
 
 If Silva said this man must keep his chains 
 
 I should find ways to free him — disobey 
 
 And free him as I did the birds. But no ! 
 
 As soon as we are wed, I'll put my prayer, 
 
 And he will not deny me : he is good. 
 
 Oh, I shall have much power as well as joy ! 
 
 Duchess Fedalma may do what she will. 
 
 11 
 
114 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A Street by the Castle. Juan leans against a 
 parapet, in moonlight, and touches his lute 
 half unconsciously . Pepita stands on tiptoe 
 watching him, and then advances till her 
 shadoiv falls in front of him. He looks to- 
 wards her. A piece of white drapery thrown 
 over her head catches the moonlight. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Ha! my Pepita! see how thin and long 
 Your shadow is. Tis so your ghost will be, 
 When you are dead. 
 
 Pepita (crossing herself). 
 
 Dead ! — O the blessed saints ! 
 You would be glad, then, if Pepita died ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Glad ! why ? Dead maidens are not merry. 
 Their ghosts are thin. I like you living better. 
 
 Pepita. 
 
 I think you like me not. I wish you did. 
 Sometimes you sing to me and make me dance. 
 Another time you take no heed of me, 
 Not though I kiss my hand to you and smile. 
 But Andres would be glad if I kissed him. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 115 
 
 Juan. 
 My poor Pepita, I am old. 
 
 You have no wrinkles. 
 
 Pepita. 
 
 No, no. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Yes, I have — within ; 
 The wrinkles are within, my little bird. 
 Why, I have lived through twice a thousand years, 
 And kept the company of men whose bones 
 Crumbled before the blessed Virgin lived. 
 
 PEPITA {crossing herself). 
 
 Nay, God defend us, that is wicked talk ! 
 
 You say it but to scorn me. ( With a sob) I will go. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Stay, little pigeon. I am not unkind. 
 
 Come, sit upon the wall. Nay, never cry. 
 
 Give me your cheek to kiss. There, there ! 
 
 (PEPITA, sitting on the low parapet, puts up her 
 cheek to JUAN, who kisses it, putting his 
 hand under her chin. She takes his hand 
 and kisses it.) 
 
Il6 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 PEPITA. 
 
 I like to kiss your hand. It is so good- 
 So smooth and soft. 
 
 Juan. 
 Well, well, I'll sing to you. 
 
 Pepita. 
 A pretty song, loving and merry ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Yes. 
 
 (Juan sings). 
 Memory, 
 Tell to me 
 What is fair, 
 Past compare, 
 
 In the land of Tubal t 
 
 Is it Spring's 
 Lovely things, 
 Blossoms white, 
 Rosy dightf 
 
 Then it is Pepita. 
 
 Summer's crest 
 Red-gold tressed, 
 
 Corn-flowers peeping under ? — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. I \J 
 
 Idle noo7is y 
 Lingering moons, 
 Sudden cloud, 
 Lightning' s shroud, 
 Sudden rain, 
 Quick again 
 
 Smiles zvhere late was thunder ? — 
 Are all these 
 Made to please ? 
 
 So too is Peplta. 
 
 A utunnis prime, 
 Apple-time, 
 Smooth cheek round, 
 Heart all sound ? — 
 Is it this 
 You woidd kiss ? 
 Then it is Pepita. 
 
 You can bring 
 No sweet thing, 
 But my mind 
 Still shall find 
 It is my Pepita. 
 
 Memory 
 Says to me 
 It is she — 
 
Il8 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 She is fair 
 Past compare 
 
 In the land of Tubal. 
 
 Pepita {seizing JUAN'S hand again). 
 Oh, then, you do love me ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Yes, in the song. 
 
 Pepita {sadly). 
 Not out of it ? — not love me out of it ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Only a little out of it, my bird. 
 
 When I was singing I was Andres, say, 
 
 Or one who loves you better still than Andres. 
 
 Pepita. 
 Not yourself? 
 
 Juan. 
 No! 
 
 Pepita {throwing his hand down pettishly). 
 
 Then take it back again ! 
 I will not have it ! 
 
the spanish gypsy. 119 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Listen, little one. 
 Juan is not a living man all by himself: 
 His life is breathed in him by other men, 
 And they speak out of him. He is their voice. 
 Juan's own life he gave once quite away. 
 It was Pepita's lover singing then — not Juan. 
 We old, old poets, if we kept our hearts, 
 Should hardly know them from another man's. 
 They shrink to make room for the many more 
 We keep within us. There, now — one more kiss, 
 And then go home again. 
 
 PEPITA {a little frightened, after letting JUAN 
 kiss her). 
 
 You are not wicked ? 
 
 Juan. 
 Ask your confessor — tell him what I said. 
 
 (Pepita goes, while Juan thrums his lute again, 
 and sings.) 
 
 Came a pretty maid 
 
 By the moon's pure light, 
 Loved me well, she said, 
 
 Eyes with tears all bright, 
 A pretty maid ! 
 
120 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 But too late she strayed, 
 Moonlight pure was there ; 
 
 She was nought but shade 
 Hiding the more fair, 
 
 The heavenly maid ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 121 
 
 A vaulted room all stone. The light shed fr'om a high 
 lamp. Wooden chairs, a desk, book-shelves. 
 The Prior, in white frock, a black rosary with 
 a crucifix of ebony and ivory at his side, is walk- 
 ing up and down, holding a written paper in his 
 hands, which are clasped behind him. 
 
 What if this witness lies ? he says he heard her 
 
 Counting her blasphemies on a rosary, 
 
 And in a bold discourse with Salomo, 
 
 Say that the Host was nought but ill-mixed flour, 
 
 That it was mean to pray — she never prayed. 
 
 I know the man who wrote this for a cur, 
 
 Who follows Don Diego, sees life's good 
 
 In scraps my nephew flings to him. What then ? 
 
 Particular lies may speak a general truth. 
 
 I guess him false, but know her heretic — 
 
 Know her for Satan's instrument, bedecked 
 
 With heathenish charms, luring the souls of men 
 
 To damning trust in good unsanctified. 
 
 Let her be prisoned — questioned — she will give 
 
 Witness against herself, that were this false . . . 
 
 (He looks at the paper again and reads, then 
 again thrusts it behind him) 
 The matter and the colour are not false : 
 The form concerns the witness not the judge ; 
 
122 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 For proof is gathered by the sifting mind, 
 
 Not given in crude and formal circumstance. 
 
 Suspicion is a heaven-sent lamp, and I — 
 
 I, watchman of the Holy Office, bear 
 
 That lamp in trust. I will keep faithful watch. 
 
 The Holy Inquisition's discipline 
 
 Is mercy, saving her, if penitent — 
 
 God grant it ! — else — root up the poison-plant, 
 
 Though 'twere a lily with a golden heart ! 
 
 This spotless maiden with her pagan soul 
 
 Is the arch-enemy's trap : he turns his back 
 
 On all the prostitutes, and watches her 
 
 To see her poison men with false belief 
 
 In rebel virtues. She has poisoned Silva ; 
 
 His shifting mind, dangerous in fitfulness, 
 
 Strong in the contradiction of itself, 
 
 Carries his young ambitions wearily, 
 
 As holy vows regretted. Once he seemed 
 
 The fresh-oped flower of Christian knighthood, born 
 
 For feats of holy daring ; and I said : 
 
 " That half of life which I, as monk, renounce, 
 
 Shall be fulfilled in him : Silva will be 
 
 That saintly noble, that wise warrior, 
 
 That blameless excellence in worldly gifts 
 
 I would have been, had I not asked to live 
 
 The higher life of man impersonal 
 
 Who reigns o'er all things by refusing all." 
 
 What is his promise now? Apostasy 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 23 
 
 From every high intent : — languid, nay, gone, 
 
 The prompt devoutness of a generous heart, 
 
 The strong obedience of a reverent will, 
 
 That breathes the Church's air and sees her light, 
 
 He peers and strains with feeble questioning, 
 
 Or else he jests. He thinks I know it not — 
 
 I who have read the history of his lapse, 
 
 As clear as it is writ in the angel's book. 
 
 He will defy me — flings great words at me — 
 
 Me who have governed all our house's acts, 
 
 Since I, a stripling, ruled his stripling father. 
 
 This maiden is the cause, and if they wed, 
 
 The Holy War may count a captain lost. 
 
 For better he were dead than keep his place, 
 
 And fill it infamously : in God's war 
 
 Slackness is infamy. Shall I stand by 
 
 And let the tempter win ? defraud Christ's cause, 
 
 And blot his banner ? — all for scruples weak 
 
 Of pity towards their young and frolicsome blood ; 
 
 Or nice discrimination of the tool 
 
 By which my hand shall work a sacred rescue ? 
 
 The fence of rules is for the purblind crowd ; 
 
 They walk by averaged precepts : sovereign men, 
 
 Seeing by God's light, see the general 
 
 By seeing all the special — own no rule 
 
 But their full vision of the moment's worth. 
 
 'Tis so God governs, using wicked men — 
 
 Nay, scheming fiends, to work his purposes. 
 
124 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Evil that good may come ? Measure the good 
 
 Before you say what's evil. Perjury ? 
 
 I scorn the perjurer, but 1 will use him 
 
 To serve the truth. There is no lie 
 
 Save in his soul, and let his soul be judged. 
 
 I know the truth, and act upon the truth. 
 
 O God, thou knowest that my will is pure. 
 Thy servant owns nought for himself, his wealth 
 Is but obedience. And I have sinned 
 In keeping small respects of human love — 
 Calling it mercy. Mercy ? Where evil is 
 True mercy must be terrible. Mercy would save. 
 Save whom ? Save serpents, locusts, wolves ? 
 Or out of pity let the idiots gorge 
 Within a famished town ? Or save the gains 
 Of men who trade in poison lest they starve ? 
 Save all things mean and foul that clog the earth 
 Stifling the better ? Save the fools who cling 
 For refuge round their hideous idol's limbs, 
 So leave the idol grinning unconsumed, 
 And save the fools to breed idolaters ? 
 O mercy worthy of the licking hound 
 That knows no future but its feeding time ! 
 Mercy has eyes that pierce the ages — sees 
 From heights divine of the eternal purpose 
 Far-scattered consequence in its vast sum ; 
 Chooses to save, but with illumined vision 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 25 
 
 Sees that to save is greatly to destroy. 
 
 Tis so the Holy Inquisition sees : its wrath 
 
 Is fed from the strong heart of wisest love. 
 
 For love must needs make hatred. He who loves 
 
 God and his law must hate the foes of God. 
 
 And I have sinned in being merciful : 
 
 Being slack in hate, I have been slack in love. 
 
 (He takes the crucifix and holds it up before him.) 
 Thou shuddering, bleeding, thirsting, dying God, 
 Thou Man of Sorrows, scourged and bruised and 
 
 torn, 
 Suffering to save — wilt thou not judge the world ? 
 This arm which held the children, this pale hand 
 That gently touched the eyelids of the blind, 
 And opened passive to the cruel nail, 
 Shall one day stretch to leftward of thy throne, 
 Charged with the power that makes the lightning 
 
 strong, 
 And hurl thy foes to everlasting hell. 
 And thou Immaculate Mother, Virgin mild, 
 Thou sevenfold-pierced, thou pitying, pleading Queen, 
 Shalt see and smile, while the black filthy souls 
 Sink with foul weight to their eternal place, 
 Purging the Holy Light. Yea, I have sinned 
 And called it mercy. But I shrink no more. 
 To-morrow morn this temptress shall be safe 
 Under the Holy Inquisition's key. 
 He thinks to wed her, and defy me then, 
 
126 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 She being shielded by our house's name. 
 But he shall never wed her. I have said. 
 
 The time is come. Exurge, Domine, 
 Judica cansam titam. Let thy foes 
 Be driven as the smoke before the wind, 
 And melt like wax upon the furnace lip ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. \2J 
 
 A large chamber richly furnished opening on a terrace- 
 garden, the trees visible through the window in 
 faint moonlight. Flowers hanging about the 
 window, lit tip by the tapers. The casket of 
 jewels open on a tabic. The gold necklace lying 
 near. FEDALMA, splendidly dressed and adorned 
 with pearls and rubies, is walking up and down. 
 
 So soft a night was never made for sleep, 
 
 But for the waking of the finer sense 
 
 To every murmuring and gentle sound, 
 
 To subtlest odours, pulses, visitings 
 
 That touch our frames with wings too delicate 
 
 To be discerned amid the blare of day. 
 
 (She pauses near the window to gather some 
 jasmine : then walks again) 
 Surely these flowers keep happy watch — their breath 
 Is their fond memory of the loving light. 
 I often rue the hours I lose in sleep : 
 It is a bliss too brief, only to see 
 This glorious world, to hear the voice of love, 
 To feel the touch, the breath of tenderness, 
 And then to rest as from a spectacle. 
 I need the curtained stillness of the night 
 To live through all my happy hours again 
 With more selection — cull them quite away 
 
128 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 From blemished moments. Then in loneliness 
 
 The face that bent before me in the day 
 
 Rises in its own light, more vivid seems 
 
 Painted upon the dark, and ceaseless glows 
 
 With sweet solemnity of gazing love, 
 
 Till like the heavenly blue it seems to grow 
 
 Nearer, more kindred, and more cherishing, 
 
 Mingling with all my being. Then the words, 
 
 The tender low-toned words come back again, 
 
 With repetition welcome as the chime 
 
 Of softly hurrying brooks — " My only love — 
 
 My love while life shall last — my own Fedalma ! " 
 
 Oh it is mine — the joy that once has been ! 
 
 Poor eager hope is but a stammerer, 
 
 Must listen dumbly to great memory, 
 
 Who makes our bliss the sweeter by her telling. 
 
 {She pauses a moment musingly?) 
 But that dumb hope is still a sleeping guard 
 Whose quiet rhythmic breath saves me from dread 
 In this fair paradise. For if the earth 
 Broke off with flower-fringed edge, visibly sheer, 
 Leaving no footing for my forward step 
 But empty blackness . . . 
 
 Nay, there is no fear — 
 They will renew themselves, day and my joy, 
 And all that past which is securely mine, 
 Will be the hidden root that nourishes 
 Our still unfolding, ever-ripening love ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 29 
 
 ( While she is uttering the last words, a little bird 
 falls softly on the floor behind her ; she hears 
 the light sound of its fall, and turns round.) 
 Did something enter? .... 
 
 Yes, this little bird .... 
 {She lifts it.) 
 Dead and yet warm : 'twas seeking sanctuary, 
 And died, perhaps of fright, at the altar foot. 
 Stay, there is something tied beneath the wing ! 
 A strip of linen, streaked with blood — what blood ? 
 The streaks are written words — are sent to me — 
 
 God, are sent to me ! Dear child, Fedalma, 
 Be brave, give no alarm — your Father comes! 
 
 (She lets the bird fall again.) 
 My Father . . . comes . . . my Father . . . 
 
 (She turns in quivering expectation toward the 
 window. Tliere is perfect stillness a few 
 moments until ZARCA appears at the win- 
 dow. He enters quickly and noiselessly ; 
 then stands still at his full height, and at 
 a distance from Fed ALMA.) 
 
 Fedalma (in a low distinct tone of terror). 
 
 It is he! 
 
 1 said his fate had laid its hold on mine. 
 
 ZARCA (advancing a step or two). 
 You know, then, who I am ? 
 
130 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 FEDALMA. 
 
 The prisoner — 
 He whom I saw in fetters — and this necklace. . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Was played with by your fingers when it hung 
 About my neck, full fifteen years ago. 
 
 FED ALMA {looking at the necklace and handling 
 it, then speaking as if unconsciously). 
 
 Full fifteen years ago ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 The very day 
 I lost you, when you wore a tiny gown 
 Of scarlet cloth with golden broidery : 
 'Twas clasped in front by coins — two golden coins. 
 The one upon the left was split in two 
 Across the king's head, right from brow to nape, 
 A dent i' the middle nicking in the cheek. 
 You see I know the little gown by heart. 
 
 FED ALMA (growing paler and more tremulous). 
 
 Yes. It is true — I have the gown — the clasps — 
 The braid — sore tarnished: — it is long ago! 
 
 Zarca. 
 But yesterday to me ; for till to-day 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 131 
 
 I saw you always as that little child. 
 And when they took my necklace from me, still 
 Your fingers played about it on my neck, 
 And still those buds of fingers on your feet 
 Caught in its meshes as you seemed to climb 
 Up to my shoulder. You were not stolen all. 
 
 You had a double life fed from my heart 
 
 (FEDALMA, letting fall the necklace, makes an im- 
 pulsive movement towards him, with out- 
 stretched hands) 
 For the Zincalo loves his children well. 
 
 FEDALMA {shrinking, trembling, and letting fall 
 her hands). 
 
 How came it that you sought me — no — I mean 
 How came it that you knew me — that you lost me ? 
 
 ZARCA (standing perfectly still). 
 
 Poor child ! I see, I see — your ragged father 
 Is welcome as the piercing wintry wind 
 Within this silken chamber. It is well. 
 I would not have a child who stooped to feign, 
 And aped a sudden love. True hate were better. 
 
 Fedalma {raising her eyes towards him, with a 
 flash of admiration, and looking at him fixedly). 
 
 Father, how was it that we lost each other ? 
 
132 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 I lost you as a man may lose a diamond 
 
 Wherein he has compressed his total wealth, 
 
 Or the right hand whose cunning makes him great : 
 
 I lost you by a trivial accident. 
 
 Marauding Spaniards, sweeping like a storm 
 
 Over a spot within the Moorish bounds, 
 
 Near where our camp lay, doubtless snatched you up, 
 
 When Zind, your nurse, as she confessed, was urged 
 
 By burning thirst to wander towards the stream, 
 
 And leave you on the sand some paces off 
 
 Playing with pebbles, while she dog-like lapped. 
 
 'Twas so I lost you — never saw you more 
 
 Until to-day I saw you dancing ! Saw 
 
 The child of the Zincalo making sport 
 
 For those who spit upon her people's name. 
 
 FEDALMA (vehemently). 
 
 It was not sport. What if the world looked on ? — 
 I danced for joy — for love of all the world. 
 But when you looked at me my joy was stabbed — 
 Stabbed with your pain. I wondered . . . now I 
 
 know . . . 
 It was my father's pain. 
 
 (She pauses a moment with eyes bent downward, 
 during which Zarca examines her face. 
 Then she says quickly). 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 33 
 
 How were you sure 
 At once I was your child ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Oh I had witness strong 
 As any Cadi needs, before I saw you ! 
 I fitted all my memories with the chat 
 Of one named Juan — one whose rapid talk 
 Showers like the blossoms from a light-twigged shrub, 
 If you but cough beside it. I learned all 
 The story of your Spanish nurture — all 
 The promise of your fortune. When at last 
 I fronted you, my little maid full-grown, 
 Belief was turned to vision : then I saw 
 That she whom Spaniards called the bright Fedalma — 
 The little red-frocked foundling three years old — 
 Grown to such perfectness the Christian Duke 
 Had wooed her for his Duchess — was the child, 
 Sole offspring of my flesh, that Lambra bore 
 One hour before the Christian, hunting us, 
 Hurried her on to death. Therefore I sought you, 
 Therefore I am come — to claim my child, 
 Not from the Spaniard, not from him who robbed, 
 But from herself. 
 
 (Fedalma has gradually approached close to 
 Zarca, and with a low sob sinks on her 
 knees before him. He stoops to kiss her 
 brow, and lays his hands on her head.) 
 
134 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Zarca (with solemn tenderness). 
 Then my child owns her father ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Father ! yes. 
 I will eat dust before I will deny 
 The flesh I spring from. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 There my daughter spoke. 
 Away then with these rubies ! 
 
 (He seizes the circlet of rubies and flings it on 
 the ground.) 
 
 (Fedalma, starting from the ground with 
 strong emotion y shrinks backward.) 
 
 Such a crown 
 Is infamy on a Zincala's brow. 
 It is her people's blood, decking her shame. 
 
 FEDALMA (after a moment, slowly and distinctly, 
 as if accepting a doom). 
 
 Then ... I am ... a Zincala ? 
 
 ZACRA. 
 
 Of a blood 
 Unmixed as virgin wine-juice. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 1 35 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Of a race 
 More outcast and despised than Moor or Jew ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Yes : wanderers whom no God took knowledge of 
 To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight 
 Another race to make them ampler room ; 
 A people with no home even in memory, 
 No dimmest lore of giant ancestors 
 To make a common hearth for piety. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 A race that lives on prey as foxes do 
 
 With stealthy, petty rapine : so despised, 
 
 It is not persecuted, only spurned, 
 
 Crushed underfoot, warred on by chance like rats, 
 
 Or swarming flies, or reptiles of the sea 
 
 Dragged in the net unsought, and flung far off 
 
 To perish as they may ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 You paint us well. 
 So abject are the men whose blood we share ; 
 Untutored, unbefriended, unendowed ; 
 No favourites of heaven or of men. 
 Therefore I cling to them ! Therefore no lure 
 
136 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake 
 
 The meagre wandering herd that lows for help 
 
 And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture 
 
 Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. 
 
 Because our race has no great memories, 
 
 I will so live, it shall remember me 
 
 For deeds of such divine beneficence 
 
 As rivers have, that teach men what is good 
 
 By blessing them. I have been schooled — have 
 
 caught 
 Lore from the Hebrew, deftness from the Moor — 
 Know the rich heritage, the milder life, 
 Of nations fathered by a mighty Past ; 
 But were our race accursed (as they who make 
 Good luck a god count all unlucky men) 
 I would espouse their curse sooner than take 
 My gifts from brethren naked of all good, 
 And lend them to the rich for usury. 
 
 (FED ALMA again advances, and putting forth 
 her right hand grasps Zarca's left. He 
 places his other hand 071 her shoulder. They 
 stand so, looking at each other.) 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 And you, my child ? are you of other mind, 
 Choosing forgetfulness, hating the truth 
 That says you are akin to needy men ? — 
 Wishing your father were some Christian Duke, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 37 
 
 Who could hang Gypsies when their task was done, 
 While you, his daughter, were not bound to care ? 
 
 FEDALMA {in a troubled eager voice). 
 
 No, I should always care — I cared for you — 
 For all, before I dreamed .... 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Before you dreamed 
 You were a born Zincala — in the bonds 
 Of the Zincali's faith. 
 
 Fedalma {bitterly). 
 
 Zincali's faith ? 
 Men say they have none. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Oh, it is a faith 
 Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts : 
 Faith to each other: the fidelity 
 Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place 
 Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share 
 The scanty water : the fidelity 
 Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, 
 Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, 
 The speech that even in lying tells the truth 
 Of heritage inevitable as past deeds, 
 Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel 
 
138 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The mystic stirring of a common life 
 
 Which makes the many one : fidelity 
 
 To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate 
 
 Made through our infant breath when we were born, 
 
 The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, 
 
 Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. 
 
 Fear thou that oath, my daughter — nay, not fear, 
 
 But love it ; for the sanctity of oaths 
 
 Lies not in lightning that avenges them, 
 
 But in the injury wrought by broken bonds 
 
 And in the garnered good of human trust. 
 
 And you have sworn — even with your infant breath 
 
 You too were pledged .... 
 
 Fedalma {letting go Zarca's hand, and sink- 
 ing backward on her knees, with bent head, 
 as if before some impending crushing 
 zv eight). 
 
 What have I sworn ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 To live the life of the Zincalo's child : 
 The child of him who, being chief, will be 
 The saviour of his tribe, or if he fail 
 Will choose to fail rather than basely win 
 The prize of renegades. Nay — not choose — 
 Is there a choice for strong souls to be weak ? 
 For men erect to crawl like hissing snakes ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 39 
 
 I choose not — I am Zarca. Let him choose 
 Who halts and wavers, having appetite 
 To feed on garbage. You, my child — do you 
 Still need to choose ? 
 
 Fed alma {raising her head). 
 What is my task ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 To be the angel of a homeless tribe : 
 
 To help me bless a race taught by no prophet, 
 
 And make their name, now but a badge of scorn, 
 
 A glorious banner floating in their midst, 
 
 Stirring the air they breathe with impulses 
 
 Of generous pride, exalting fellowship 
 
 Until it soars to magnanimity. 
 
 I'll guide my brethren forth to their new land, 
 
 Where they shall plant and sow and reap their own, 
 
 Serving each other's needs, and so be spurred 
 
 To skill in all the arts that succour life ; 
 
 Where we may kindle our first altar-fire 
 
 From settled hearths, and call our Holy Place 
 
 The hearth that binds us in one family. 
 
 That land awaits them : they await their chief — 
 
 Me who am prisoned. All depends on you. 
 
 FED ALMA {rising to her full height, and looking 
 solemnly at Zarca). 
 
 Father, your child is ready ! She will not 
 
140 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Forsake her kindred : she will brave all scorn 
 
 Sooner than scorn herself. Let Spaniards all, 
 
 Christians, Jews, Moors, shoot out the lip and say, 
 
 " Lo, the first hero in a tribe of thieves." 
 
 Is it not written so of them ? They, too, 
 
 Were slaves, lost, wandering, sunk beneath a curse, 
 
 Till Moses, Christ, and Mahomet were born, 
 
 Till beings lonely in their greatness lived, 
 
 And lived to save their people. Father, listen. 
 
 The Duke to-morrow weds me secretly : 
 
 But straight he will present me as his wife 
 
 To all his household, cavaliers and dames 
 
 And noble pages. Then I will declare 
 
 Before them all, " I am his daughter, his, 
 
 The Gypsy's, owner of this golden badge." 
 
 Then I shall win your freedom ; then the Duke — 
 
 Why, he will be your son ! — will send you forth 
 
 With aid and honours. Then, before all eyes 
 
 I'll clasp this badge on you, and lift my brow 
 
 For you to kiss it, saying by that sign, 
 
 " I glory in my father." This, to-morrow. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 A woman's dream — who thinks by smiling well 
 To ripen figs in frost. What ! marry first, 
 And then proclaim your birth ? Enslave yourself 
 To use your freedom ? Share another's name, 
 Then treat it as you will ? How will that tune 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 141 
 
 Ring in your bridegroom's ears — that sudden song 
 Of triumph in your Gypsy father ? 
 
 Fedalma {discouraged). 
 
 Nay, 
 I meant not so. We marry hastily — 
 Yet there is time — there will be : — in less space 
 Than he can take to look at me, I'll speak 
 And tell him all. Oh, I am not afraid ! 
 His love for me is stronger than all hate ; 
 Nay, stronger than my love, which cannot sway 
 Demons that haunt me — tempt me to rebel. 
 Were he Fedalma and I Silva, he 
 Could love confession, prayers, and tonsured monks 
 If my soul craved them. He will never hate 
 The race that bore him what he loves the most. 
 I shall but do more strongly what I will, 
 Having his will to help me. And to-morrow, 
 Father, as surely as this heart shall beat, 
 You — every chained Zincalo, shall be free. 
 
 Zarca {coming nearer to her, and laying his 
 hand on her shoulder). 
 
 Too late, too poor a service that, my child ! 
 Not so the woman who would save her tribe 
 Must help its heroes — not by wordy breath, 
 By easy prayers strong in a lover's ear, 
 
142 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 By showering wreaths and sweets and wafted kisses, 
 
 And then, when all the smiling work is done, 
 
 Turning to rest upon her down again, 
 
 And whisper languid pity for her race 
 
 Upon the bosom of her alien spouse. 
 
 Not to such petty mercies as can fall 
 
 Twixt stitch and stitch of silken broidery work, 
 
 Such miracles of mitred saints who pause 
 
 Beneath their gilded canopy to heal 
 
 A man sun-stricken : not to such trim merit 
 
 As soils its dainty shoes for charity 
 
 And simpers meekly at the pious stain, 
 
 But never trod with naked bleeding feet 
 
 Where no man praised it, and where no Church 
 
 blessed : 
 Not to such almsdeeds fit for holidays 
 Were you, my daughter, consecrated — bound 
 By laws that, breaking, you will dip your bread 
 In murdered brother's blood and call it sweet — 
 When you were born in the Zincalo's tent, 
 And lifted up in sight of all your tribe, 
 Who greeted you with shouts of loyal joy, 
 Sole offspring of the chief in whom they trust 
 As in the oft-tried never-failing flint 
 They strike their fire from. Other work is yours. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 What work ? — what is it that you ask of me ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 143 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 A work as pregnant as the act of men 
 
 Who set their ships aflame and spring to land, 
 
 A fatal deed .... 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Stay ! never utter it ! 
 If it can part my lot from his whose love 
 Has chosen me. Talk not of oaths, of birth, 
 Of men as numerous as the dim white stars — 
 As cold and distant, too, for my heart's pulse. 
 No ills on earth, though you should count them up 
 With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh 
 For me, his ill who is my supreme love. 
 All sorrows else are but imagined flames, 
 Making me shudder at an unfelt smart; 
 But his imagined sorrow is a fire 
 That scorches me. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 I know, I know it well — 
 The first young passionate wail of spirits called 
 To some great destiny. In vain, my daughter ! 
 Lay the young eagle in what nest you will, 
 The cry and swoop of eagles overhead 
 Vibrate prophetic in its kindred frame, 
 
144 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And make it spread its wings and poise itself 
 For the eagle's flight. Hear what you have to do. 
 
 (Fed ALMA breaks from him, and stands half 
 
 averted, as if she dreaded the effect of his 
 
 looks and words) 
 My comrades even now file off their chains 
 In a low turret by the battlements, 
 Where we were locked with slight and sleepy guard— 
 We who had files hid in our shaggy hair, 
 And possible ropes that waited but our will 
 In half our garments. Oh, the Moorish blood 
 Runs thick and warm to us, though thinned by chrism. 
 I found a friend among our gaolers — one 
 Who loves the Gypsy as the Moor's ally. 
 I know the secrets of this fortress. Listen. 
 Hard by yon terrace is a narrow stair, 
 Cut in the living rock, and at one point 
 In its slow straggling course it branches off 
 Towards a low wooden door, that art has bossed 
 To such unevenness, it seems one piece 
 With the rough-hewn rock. Opened, it leads 
 Through a broad passage burrowed under-ground 
 A good half-mile out to the open plain : 
 Made for escape, in dire extremity 
 From siege or burning, of the house's wealth 
 In women or in gold. To find that door 
 Needs one who knows the number of the steps 
 Just to the turning point ; to open it, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 145 
 
 Needs one who knows the secret of the bolt. 
 You have that secret : you will ope that door, 
 And fly with us. 
 
 FEDALMA {receding a little, a.7id gathering her- 
 self up in an attitude of resolve opposite to 
 Zarca). 
 
 No, I will never fly ! 
 Never forsake that chief half of my soul 
 Where lies my love. I swear to set you free. 
 Ask for no more ; it is not possible. 
 Father, my soul is not too base to ring 
 At touch of your great thoughts ; nay, in my blood 
 There streams the sense unspeakable of kind, 
 As leopard feels at ease with leopard. But — 
 Look at these hands ! You say when they were 
 
 little 
 They played about the gold upon your neck. 
 I do believe it, for their tiny pulse 
 Made record of it in the inmost coil 
 Of growing memory. But see them now ! 
 Oh, they have made fresh record ; twined themselves 
 With other throbbing hands whose pulses feed 
 Not memories only but a blended life — 
 Life that will bleed to death if it be severed. 
 Have pity, father ! Wait the morning ; say 
 You will wait the morning. I will win 
 Your freedom openly : you shall go forth 
 
 K 
 
I46 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 With aid and honours. Silva will deny 
 Nought to my asking .... 
 
 ZARCA (zvith contemptuous decision). 
 
 Till you ask him aught 
 Wherein he is powerless. Soldiers even now 
 Murmur against him that he risks the town, 
 And forfeits all the prizes of a foray 
 To get his bridal pleasure with a bride 
 Too low for him. They'll murmur more and louder 
 If captives of our pith and sinew, fit 
 For all the work the Spaniard hates, are freed — 
 Now, too, when Spanish hands are scanty. What, 
 Turn Gypsies loose instead of hanging them ! 
 'Tis flat against the edict. Nay, perchance 
 Murmurs aloud may turn to silent threats 
 Of some well-sharpened dagger ; for your Duke 
 Has to his heir a pious cousin, who deems 
 The Cross were better served if he were Duke. 
 Such good you'll work your lover by your prayers. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Then, I will free you now ! You shall be safe, 
 Nor he be blamed, save for his love to me. 
 I will declare what I have done : the deed 
 May put our marriage off ... . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Ay, till the time 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 147 
 
 When you shall be a queen in Africa, 
 And he be prince enough to sue for you. 
 You cannot free us and come back to him. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 And why ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 I would compel you to go forth. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 You tell me that ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Yes, for I'd have you choose ; 
 Though, being of the blood you are — my blood — 
 You have no right to choose. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 I only owe 
 A daughter's debt ; I was not born a slave. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 No, not a slave ; but you were born to reign. 
 Tis a compulsion of a higher sort, 
 Whose fetters are the net invisible 
 That holds all life together. Royal deeds 
 May make long destinies for multitudes, 
 
I48 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And you are called to do them. You belong 
 Not to the petty round of circumstance 
 That makes a woman's lot, but to your tribe, 
 Who trust in me and in my blood with trust 
 That men call blind ; but it is blind 
 Only as unyeaned reason is, that stirs 
 Within the womb of superstition. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No! 
 I belong to him who loves me — whom I love — 
 Who chose me — whom I chose — to whom I pledged 
 A woman's truth. And that is nature too, 
 Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Well, then, unmake yourself from a Zincala — 
 Unmake yourself from being child of mine ! 
 Take holy water, cross your dark skin white ; 
 Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks ; 
 Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe : 
 Unmake yourself — doff all the eagle plumes 
 And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips 
 Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his 
 That you should prattle o'er his words again ! 
 Get a small heart that flutters at the smiles 
 Of the plump penitent and greedy saint 
 Who breaks all treaties in the name of God, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 149 
 
 Saves souls by confiscation, sends to heaven 
 
 The altar-fumes of burning heretics, 
 
 And chaffers with the Levite for the gold ; 
 
 Holds Gypsies beasts unfit for sacrifice, 
 
 So sweeps them out like worms alive or dead. 
 
 Go, trail your gold and velvet in her presence ! — 
 
 Conscious Zincala, smile at your rare luck, 
 
 While half your brethren .... 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 I am not so vile ! 
 It is not to such mockeries that I cling, 
 Not to the flaring tow of gala-lights ; 
 It is to him — my love — the face of day. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 What, will you part him from the air he breathes. 
 Never inhale with him although you kiss him ? 
 Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, 
 Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood ? 
 Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke 
 And not wed shame at mention of your race, 
 And not wed hardness to their miseries — 
 Nay, not wed murder. Would you save my life 
 Yet stab my purpose ? maim my every limb, 
 Put out my eyes, and turn me loose to feed ? 
 Is that salvation ? rather drink my blood. 
 
150 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 That child of mine who weds my enemy — 
 Adores a God who took no heed of Gypsies — 
 Forsakes her people, leaves their poverty 
 To join the luckier crowd that mocks their woes- 
 That child of mine is doubly murderess, 
 Murdering her father's hope, her people's trust. 
 Such draughts are mingled in your cup of love. 
 And when you have become a thing so poor, 
 Your life is all a fashion without law 
 Save frail conjecture of a changing wish, 
 Your worshipped sun, your smiling face of day, 
 Will turn to cloudiness, and you will shiver 
 In your thin finery of vain desire. 
 Men call his passion madness ; and he, too, 
 May learn to think it madness : 'tis a thought 
 Of ducal sanity. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No, he is true ! 
 And if I part from him I part from joy. 
 Oh, it was morning with us — I seemed young. 
 But now I know I am an aged sorrow — 
 My people's sorrow. Father, since I am yours— 
 Since I must walk an unslain sacrifice, 
 Carrying the knife within me, quivering — 
 Put cords upon me, drag me to the doom 
 My birth has laid upon me. See, I kneel : 
 I cannot will to go. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 15 I 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Will then to stay ! 
 Say you will take your better, painted such 
 By blind desire, and choose the hideous worse 
 For thousands who were happier but for you. 
 My thirty followers are assembled now 
 Without this terrace : I your father wait 
 That you may lead us forth to liberty — 
 Restore me to my tribe — five hundred men 
 Whom I alone can save, alone can rule, 
 And plant them as a mighty nation's seed. 
 Why, vagabonds who clustered round one man, 
 Their voice of God, their prophet and their king, 
 Twice grew to empire on the teeming shores 
 Of Africa, and sent new royalties 
 To feed afresh the Arab sway in Spain. 
 My vagabonds are a seed more generous, 
 Quick as the serpent, loving as the hound, 
 And beautiful as disinherited gods. 
 They have a promised land beyond the sea : 
 There I may lead them, raise my standard, call 
 All wandering Zincali to that home, 
 And make a nation — bring light, order, law, 
 Instead of chaos. You, my only heir, 
 Are called to reign for me when I am gone. 
 Now choose your deed : to save or to destroy. 
 You, woman and Zincala, fortunate 
 
152 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Above your fellows — you who hold a curse 
 Or blessing in the hollow of your hand — 
 Say you will loose that hand from fellowship, 
 Let go the rescuing rope, hurl all the tribes, 
 Children and countless beings yet to come, 
 Down from the upward path of light and joy, 
 Back to the dark and marshy wilderness 
 Where life is nought but blind tenacity 
 Of that which is. Say you will curse your race ! 
 
 FEDALMA {rising and stretching out her arms 
 in deprecation). 
 
 No, no — I will not say it — I will go ! 
 Father, I choose ! I will not take a heaven 
 Haunted by shrieks of far-off misery. 
 This deed and I have ripened with the hours : 
 It is a part of me — a wakened thought 
 That, rising like a giant, masters me, 
 And grows into a doom. O mother life, 
 That seemed to nourish me so tenderly, 
 Even in the womb you vowed me to the fire, 
 Hung on my soul the burden of men's hopes, 
 And pledged me to redeem !— I'll pay the debt. 
 You gave me strength that I should pour it all 
 Into this anguish. I can never shrink 
 Back into bliss — my heart has grown too big 
 With things that might be. Father, I will go. 
 I will strip off these gems. Some happier bride 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 53 
 
 Shall wear them, since I should be dowered 
 With nought but curses, dowered with misery 
 Of men — of women, who have hearts to bleed 
 As mine is bleeding. 
 
 (She sinks on a seat, and begins to take off her 
 jewels.) 
 
 Now, good gems, we part. 
 Speak of me always tenderly to Silva. 
 
 (She pauses, turning to ZARCA.) 
 O father, will the women of our tribe 
 Suffer as I do, in the years to come 
 When you have made them great in Africa ? 
 Redeemed from ignorant ills only to feel 
 A conscious woe ? Then — is it worth the pains ? 
 Were it not better when we reach that shore 
 To raise a funeral-pile and perish all ? 
 So closing up a myriad avenues 
 To misery yet unwrought ? My soul is faint — 
 Will these sharp pangs buy any certain good ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Nay, never falter: no great deed is done 
 By falterers who ask for certainty. 
 No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, 
 The undivided will to seek the good : 
 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings 
 A human music from the indifferent air. 
 The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
 
154 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Is to have been a hero. Say we fail ! — 
 We feed the high tradition of the world, 
 And leave our spirit in Zincalo breasts. 
 
 FEDALMA (unclasping her jewelled belt, and 
 throwing it down) 
 
 Yes, I will say that we shall fail ! I will not count 
 On aught but being faithful. I will take 
 This yearning self of mine and strangle it. 
 I will not be half-hearted : never yet 
 Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. 
 Die, my young joy — die, all my hungry hopes — 
 The milk you cry for from the breast of life 
 Is thick with curses. Oh, all fatness here 
 Snatches its meat from leanness — feeds on graves. 
 I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. 
 The saints were cowards who stood by to see 
 Christ crucified : they should have flung themselves 
 Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain — 
 The grandest death, to die in vain — for love 
 Greater than sways the forces of the world ! 
 That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed 
 The curse of the Zincali. Father, come ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 No curse has fallen on us till we cease 
 To help each other. You, if you are false 
 To that first fellowship, lay on the curse. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 55 
 
 But write now to the Spaniard : briefly say 
 That I, your father, came ; that you obeyed 
 The fate which made you a Zincala, as his fate 
 Made him a Spanish duke and Christian knight. 
 He must not think .... 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Yes, I will write, but he — 
 Oh, he would know it — he would never think 
 The chain that dragged me from him could be aught 
 But scorching iron entering in my soul. 
 
 {She writes.) 
 Silva, sole love — he came — my father came. 
 I am the daughter of the Gypsy chief 
 Who means to be the Saviour of our tribe. 
 He calls on me to live for his great end. 
 To live f nay, die for it. Fedalma dies 
 In leaving Silva : all that lives henceforth 
 Is the Zincala. (She rises.) 
 
 Father, now I go 
 To wed my people's lot. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 To wed a crown. 
 We will make royal the Zincali's lot — 
 Give it a country, homes, and monuments 
 Held sacred through the lofty memories 
 That we shall leave behind us. Come, my Queen ! 
 
156 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Stay, my betrothal ring ! — one kiss — farewell ! 
 love, you were my crown. No other crown 
 Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 SlLVA was marching homeward while the moon 
 Still shed mild brightness like the far-off hope 
 Of those pale virgin lives that wait and pray. 
 The stars thin-scattered made the heavens large, 
 Bending in slow procession ; in the east 
 Emergent from the dark waves of the hills, 
 Seeming a little sister of the moon, 
 Glowed Venus all unquenched. Silva, in haste, 
 Exultant and yet anxious, urged his troop 
 To quick and quicker march : he had delight 
 In forward stretching shadows, in the gleams 
 That travelled on the armour of the van, 
 And in the many-hoofed sound : in all that told 
 Of hurrying movement to o'ertake his thought 
 Already in Bedmar, close to Fedalma, 
 Leading her forth a wedded bride, fast vowed, 
 Defying Father Isidor. His glance 
 Took in with much content the priest who rode 
 
l6o THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Firm in his saddle, stalwart and broad-backed, 
 
 Crisp-curled, and comfortably secular, 
 
 Right in the front of him. But by degrees 
 
 Stealthily faint, disturbing with slow loss 
 
 That showed not yet full promise of a gain, 
 
 The light was changing and the watch intense 
 
 Of moon and stars seemed weary, shivering : 
 
 The sharp white brightness passed from off the rocks 
 
 Carrying the shadows : beauteous Night lay dead 
 
 Under the pall of twilight, and the love-star 
 
 Sickened and shrank. The troop was winding now 
 
 Upward to where a pass between the peaks 
 
 Seemed like an opened gate — to Silva seemed 
 
 An outer-gate of heaven, for through that pass 
 
 They entered his own valley, near Bedmar. 
 
 Sudden within the pass, a horseman rose 
 
 One instant dark upon the banner pale 
 
 Of rock-cut sky, the next in motion swift 
 
 With hat and plume high shaken — ominous. 
 
 Silva had dreamed his future, and the dream 
 
 Held not this messenger. A minute more — 
 
 It was his friend Don Alvar whom he saw 
 
 Reining his horse up, face to face with him, 
 
 Sad as the twilight, all his clothes ill-girt — 
 
 As if he had been roused to see one die, 
 
 And brought the news to him whom death had robbed. 
 
 Silva believed he saw the worst — the town 
 
 Stormed by the infidel — or, could it be 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. l6l 
 
 Fedalma dragged ? — no, there was not yet time. 
 But with a marble face, he only said, 
 "What evil, Alvar?" 
 
 " What this paper speaks." 
 It was Fedalma's letter folded close 
 And mute as yet for Silva. But his friend, 
 Keeping it still sharp-pinched against his breast, 
 " It will smite hard, my lord : a private grief. 
 I would not have you pause to read it here. 
 Let us ride on — we use the moments best, 
 Reaching the town with speed. The smaller ill 
 Is that our Gypsy prisoners have escaped." 
 " No more. Give me the paper — nay, I know — 
 'Twill make no difference. Bid them march on faster." 
 Silva pushed forward — held the paper crushed 
 Close in his right. " They have imprisoned her," 
 He said to Alvar in low, hard-cut tones, 
 Like a dream-speech of slumbering revenge. 
 " No — when they came to fetch her she was gone." 
 Swift as the right touch on a spring, that word 
 Made Silva read the letter. She was gone ! 
 But not into locked darkness — only gone 
 Into free air — where he might find her yet. 
 The bitter loss had triumph in it — what ! 
 They would have seized her with their holy claws ? 
 The Prior's sweet morsel of despotic hate 
 Was snatched from off his lips. This misery 
 Had yet a taste of joy. 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 But she was gone ! 
 The sun had risen, and in the castle walls 
 The light grew strong and stronger. Silva walked 
 Through the long corridor where dimness yet 
 Cherished a lingering, flickering, dying hope : 
 Fedalma still was there — he could not see 
 The vacant place that once her presence filled. 
 Can we believe that the dear dead are gone ? 
 Love in sad weeds forgets the funeral day, 
 Opens the chamber door and almost smiles — 
 Then sees the sunbeams pierce athwart the bed 
 Where the pale face is not. So Silva's joy, 
 Like the sweet habit of caressing hands 
 That seek the memory of another hand, 
 Still lived on fitfully in spite of words, 
 And, numbing thought with vague illusion, dulled 
 The slow and steadfast beat of certainty. 
 But in the rooms inexorable light 
 Streamed through the open window where she fled, 
 Streamed on the belt and coronet thrown down — 
 Mute witnesses — sought out the ring 
 That sparkled on the crimson, solitary, 
 Wounding him like a word. O hateful light ! 
 It filled the chambers with her absence, glared 
 On all the motionless things her hand had touched, 
 Motionless all — save where old Inez lay 
 Sunk on the floor holding her rosary, 
 Making its shadow tremble with her fear. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 63 
 
 And Silva passed her by because she grieved : 
 It was the lute, the gems, the pictured heads, 
 He longed to crush, because they made no sign 
 But of insistance that she was not there, 
 She who had filled his sight and hidden them. 
 He went forth on the terrace tow'rd the stairs, 
 Saw the rained petals of the cistus flowers 
 Crushed by large feet ; but on one shady spot 
 Far down the steps, where dampness made a home, 
 He saw a footprint delicate-slippered, small, 
 So dear to him, he searched for sister-prints, 
 Searched in the rock-hewn passage with a lamp 
 For other trace of her, and found a glove ; 
 But not Fedalma's. It was Juan's glove, 
 Tasselled, perfumed, embroidered with his name, 
 A gift of dames. Then Juan, too, was gone ? 
 Full-mouthed conjecture, hurrying through the town, 
 Had spread the tale already : it was he 
 That helped the Gypsies' flight. He talked and sang 
 Of nothing but the Gypsies and Fedalma. 
 He drew the threads together, wove the plan ; 
 Had lingered out by moonlight and been seen 
 Strolling, as was his wont, within the walls, 
 Humming his ditties. So Don Alvar told, 
 Conveying outside rumour. But the Duke 
 Keeping his haughtiness as a visor closed 
 Would show no agitated front in busy quest 
 For small disclosures. What her writing bore 
 
164 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Had been enough. He knew that she was gone, 
 Knew why. 
 
 " The Duke," some said, " will send a force, 
 Retake the prisoners, and bring back his bride." 
 But others, winking, " Nay, her wedding dress 
 Would be the san-benito. 'Tis a fight 
 Between the Duke and Prior. Wise bets will choose 
 The churchman : he's the iron, and the Duke. . . ." 
 " Is a fine piece of pottery," said mine host, 
 Softening the epigram with a bland regret. 
 
 There was the thread that in the new-made knot 
 Of obstinate circumstance seemed hardest drawn, 
 Vexed most the sense of Silva, in these hours 
 Of fresh and angry pain — there, in that fight 
 Against a foe whose sword was magical, 
 His shield invisible terrors— against a foe 
 Who stood as if upon the smoking mount 
 Ordaining plagues. All else, Fedalma's flight, 
 The father's claim, her Gypsy birth disclosed, 
 Were momentary crosses, hindrances 
 A Spanish noble might despise. This Gypsy chief 
 Might still be treated with, would not refuse 
 A proffered ransom, which would better serve 
 Gypsy prosperity, give him more power 
 Over his tribe, than any fatherhood : 
 Nay, all the father in him must plead loud 
 For marriage of his daughter where she loved — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 65 
 
 Her love being placed so high and lustrously. 
 
 The keen Zincalo had foreseen a price 
 
 That would be paid him for his daughter's dower — 
 
 Might soon give signs. Oh, all his purpose lay 
 
 Face upward. Silva here felt strong, and smiled. 
 
 What could a Spanish noble not command ? 
 
 He only helped the Queen, because he chose ; 
 
 Could war on Spaniards, and could spare the Moor ; 
 
 Buy justice, or defeat it — if he would : 
 
 Was loyal, not from weakness but from strength 
 
 Of high resolve to use his birthright well. 
 
 For nobles too are gods, like Emperors, 
 
 Accept perforce their own divinity 
 
 And wonder at the virtue of their touch, 
 
 Till obstinate resistance shakes their creed, 
 
 Shattering that self whose wholeness is not rounded 
 
 Save in the plastic souls of other men. 
 
 Don Silva had been suckled in that creed 
 
 (A speculative noble else, knowing Italian), 
 
 Held it absurd as foolish argument 
 
 If any failed in deference, was too proud 
 
 Not to be courteous to so poor a knave 
 
 As one who knew not necessary truths 
 
 Of birth and precedence ; but cross his will, 
 
 The miracle-working will, his rage leaped out 
 
 As by a right divine to rage more fatal 
 
 Than a mere mortal man's. And now that will 
 
 Had met a stronger adversary — strong 
 
1 66 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 As awful ghosts are whom we cannot touch, 
 While they grasp tis, subtly as poisoned air, 
 In deep-laid fibres of inherited fear 
 That lie below all courage. 
 
 Silva said, 
 " She is not lost to me, might still be mine 
 But for the Inquisition — the dire hand 
 That waits to clutch her with a hideous grasp 
 Not passionate, human, living, but a grasp 
 As in the death-throe when the human soul 
 Departs and leaves force unrelenting, locked, 
 Not to be loosened save by slow decay 
 That frets the universe. Father Isidor 
 Has willed it so : his phial dropped the oil 
 To catch the air-borne motes of idle slander ; 
 He fed the fascinated gaze that clung 
 Round all her movements, frank as growths of spring, 
 With the new hateful interest of suspicion. 
 What barrier is this Gypsy father ? a mere gate 
 I'll find the key for. The one barrier, 
 The tightening cord that winds about my limbs, 
 Is this kind uncle, this imperious saint, 
 He who will save me, guard me from myself. 
 And he can work his will : I have no help 
 Save reptile secrecy, and no revenge 
 Save that I will do what he schemes to hinder. 
 Ay, secrecy, and disobedience — these 
 No tyranny can master. Disobey ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 167 
 
 You may divide the universe with God, 
 
 Keeping your will unbent, and hold a world 
 
 Where He is not supreme. The Prior shall know it ! 
 
 His will shall breed resistance : he shall do 
 
 The thing he would not, further what he hates 
 
 By hardening my resolve." 
 
 But 'neath this inward speech — 
 Predominant, hectoring, the more passionate voice 
 Of many-blended consciousness — there breathed 
 Murmurs of doubt, the weakness of a self 
 That is not one ; denies and yet believes ; 
 Protests with passion, " This is natural " — 
 Yet owns the other still were truer, better, 
 Could nature follow it. A self disturbed 
 By budding growths of reason premature 
 That breed disease. Spite o( defiant rage 
 Silva half shrank before the steadfast man 
 Whose life was one compacted whole, a state 
 Where the rule changed not, and the law was strong. 
 Then straightway he resented that forced tribute, 
 Rousing rebellion with intenser will. 
 
 But soon this inward strife the slow-paced hours 
 
 Slackened ; and the soul sank with hunger-pangs, 
 
 Hunger of love. Debate was swept right down 
 
 By certainty of loss intolerable. 
 
 A little loss ! only a dark-tressed maid 
 
 Who had no heritage save her beauteous being ! 
 
1 68 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 But in the candour of her virgin eyes 
 
 Saying, I love ; and in the mystic charm 
 
 Of her dear presence, Silva found a heaven 
 
 Where faith and hope were drowned as stars in day. 
 
 Fedalma there, each momentary Now 
 
 Seemed a whole blest existence, a full cup 
 
 That, flowing over, asked no pouring hand 
 
 From past to future. All the world was hers. 
 
 Splendour was but the herald trumpet-note 
 
 Of her imperial coming : penury 
 
 Vanished before her as before a gem 
 
 The pledge of treasuries. Fedalma there, 
 
 He thought all loveliness was lovelier, 
 
 She crowning it : all goodness credible, 
 
 Because of that great trust her goodness bred. 
 
 For the strong current of the passionate love 
 
 Which urged his life tow'rds hers, like urgent floods 
 
 That hurry through the various-mingled earth, 
 
 Carried within its stream all qualities 
 
 Of what it penetrated, and made love 
 
 Only another name, as Silva was, 
 
 For the whole man that breathed within his frame. 
 
 And she was gone. Well, goddesses will go ; 
 
 But for a noble there were mortals left 
 
 Shaped just like goddesses — O hateful sweet ! 
 
 O impudent pleasure that should dare to front 
 
 With vulgar visage memories divine ! 
 
 The noble's birthright of miraculous will 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 69 
 
 Turning / would to must be, spurning all 
 
 Offered as substitute for what it chose, 
 
 Tightened and fixed in strain irrevocable 
 
 The passionate selection of that love 
 
 Which came not first but as all-conquering last. 
 
 Great Love has many attributes, and shrines 
 
 For varied worshippers, but his force divine 
 
 Shows most its many-named fulness in the man 
 
 Whose nature multitudinously mixed — 
 
 Each ardent impulse grappling with a thought — 
 
 Resists all easy gladness, all content 
 
 Save mystic rapture, where the questioning soul 
 
 Flooded with consciousness of good that is 
 
 Finds life one bounteous answer. So it was 
 
 In Silva's nature, Love had mastery there, 
 
 Not as a holiday ruler, but as one 
 
 Who quells a tumult in a day of dread, 
 
 A welcomed despot. 
 
 O all comforters, 
 All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy, 
 Came with her coming, in her presence lived. 
 Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall 
 Pencilled upon the grass ; high summer morns 
 When white light rains upon the quiet sea 
 And corn-fields flush with ripeness ; odours soft — 
 Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home 
 And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague 
 Of far-off moments when our life was fresh ; 
 
70 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 All sweetly-tempered music, gentle change 
 
 Of sound, form, colour, as on wide lagoons 
 
 At sunset when from black far-floating prows 
 
 Comes a clear wafted song ; all exquisite joy 
 
 Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream 
 
 Made placid in the fulness of a lake — 
 
 All came with her sweet presence, for she brought 
 
 The love supreme which gathers to its realm 
 
 All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand 
 
 Waked with a touch the intricate harmonies 
 
 In her own manifold work. Fedalma there, 
 
 Fastidiousness became the prelude fine 
 
 For full contentment ; and young melancholy, 
 
 Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain 
 
 Of waiting for that perfect happiness. 
 
 The happiness was gone ! 
 
 He sate alone, 
 Hating companionship that was not hers ; 
 Felt bruised with hopeless longing ; drank, as wine, 
 Illusions of what had been, would have been ; 
 Weary with anger and a strained resolve, 
 Sought passive happiness in a waking dream. 
 It has been so with rulers, emperors, 
 Nay, sages who held secrets of great Time, 
 Sharing his hoary and beneficent life — 
 Men who sate throned among the multitudes — 
 They have sore sickened at the loss of one. 
 Silva sat lonely in her chamber, leaned 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 17 1 
 
 Where she had leaned, to feel the evening breath 
 Shed from the orange trees ; when suddenly 
 His grief was echoed in a sad young voice 
 Far and yet near, brought by aerial wings. 
 
 The world is great : the birds all fly from me, 
 The stars are golden fruit upon a tree 
 A II out of reach : my little sister went, 
 A nd I am lonely. 
 
 The world is great : I tried to mount the hill 
 A bove the pines, where the light lies so still, 
 But it rose higher : little Lisa went, 
 A nd I am lonely. 
 
 The world is great : the wind comes rushing by, 
 I wonder where it comes from ; sea-birds cry 
 And hurt my heart : my little sister went, 
 And I am lonely. 
 
 The world is great : the people laugh arid talk, 
 A nd make loud holiday : how fast they walk ! 
 Fm lame, they push me : little Lisa went, 
 And I am lonely. 
 
 'Twas Pablo, like the wounded spirit of song 
 Pouring melodious pain to cheat the hour 
 For idle soldiers in the castle court. 
 
172 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Dreamily Silva heard and hardly felt 
 
 The song was outward, rather felt it part 
 
 Of his own aching, like the lingering day, 
 
 Or slow and mournful cadence of the bell. 
 
 But when the voice had ceased, he longed for it, 
 
 And fretted at the pause, as memory frets 
 
 When words that made its body fall away 
 
 And leave it yearning dumbly. Silva then 
 
 Bethought him whence the voice came, framed perforce 
 
 Some outward image of a life not his 
 
 That made a sorrowful centre to the world : 
 
 A boy lame, melancholy-eyed, who bore 
 
 A viol — yes, that very child he saw 
 
 This morning eating roots by the gateway — saw 
 
 As one fresh-ruined sees and spells a name 
 
 And knows not what he does, yet finds it writ 
 
 Full in the inner record. Hark, again ! 
 
 The voice and viol. Silva called his thought 
 
 To guide his ear and track the travelling sound. 
 
 O bird that used to press 
 Thy head against my cheek 
 With touch that seemed to speak 
 
 A nd ask a tender "yes " — 
 
 Ay de mi } my bird ! 
 
 O tender downy breast 
 
 A nd warmly beating heart, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 73 
 
 That beating seemed a part 
 Of me who gave it rest — 
 
 Ay de mi, my bird I 
 
 The western court ! The singer might be seen 
 From the upper gallery : quick the Duke was there 
 Looking upon the court as on a stage. 
 Men eased of armour, stretched upon the ground, 
 Gambling by snatches ; shepherds from the hills 
 Who brought their bleating friends for slaughter ; 
 
 grooms 
 Shouldering loose harness ; leather-aproned smiths, 
 Traders with wares, green-suited serving men, 
 Made a round audience ; and in their midst 
 Stood little Pablo, pouring forth his song, 
 Just as the Duke had pictured. But the song 
 Was strangely companied by Roldan's play 
 With the swift gleaming balls, and now was crushed 
 By peals of laughter at grave Annibal, 
 Who carrying stick and purse o'erturned the pence, 
 Making mistake by rule. Silva had thought 
 To melt hard bitter grief by fellowship 
 With the world-sorrow trembling in his ear 
 In Pablo's voice ; had meant to give command 
 For the boy's presence ; but this company, 
 This mountebank and monkey, must be — stay ! 
 Not excepted — must be ordered too 
 Into his private presence ; they had brought 
 
174 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Suggestion of a ready shapen tool 
 
 To cut a path between his helpless wish 
 
 And what it imaged. A ready shapen tool ! 
 
 A spy, an envoy whom he might despatch 
 
 In unsuspected secrecy, to search him out 
 
 The Gypsies' refuge so that none beside 
 
 Might learn it. And this juggler could be bribed, 
 
 Would have no fear of Moors — for who would kill 
 
 Dancers and monkeys ? — could pretend a journey 
 
 Back to his home, leaving his boy the while 
 
 To please the Duke with song. Without such chance — 
 
 An envoy cheap and secret as a mole 
 
 Who could go scatheless, come back for his pay 
 
 And vanish straight, tied by no neighbourhood — 
 
 Without such chance as this poor juggler brought, 
 
 Finding Fedalma was betraying her. 
 
 Short interval betwixt the thought and deed. 
 
 Roldan was called to private audience 
 
 With Annibal and Pablo. All the world 
 
 (By which I mean the score or two who heard) 
 
 Shrugged high their shoulders, and supposed the Duke 
 
 Would fain beguile the evening and replace 
 
 His lacking happiness, as was the right 
 
 Of nobles, who could pay for any cure, 
 
 And wore nought broken, save a broken limb. 
 
 In truth, at first, the Duke bade Pablo sing, 
 
 But, while he sang, called Roldan wide apart, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 75 
 
 And told him of a mission secret, brief — 
 A quest which well-performed might earn much gold, 
 But, if betrayed, another sort of wages. 
 Roldan was ready ; " wished above all for gold 
 And never wished to speak ; had worked enough 
 At wagging his old tongue and chiming jokes ; 
 Thought it was others' turn to play the fool. 
 Give him but pence enough, no rabbit, sirs, 
 Would eat and stare and be more dumb than he. 
 Give him his orders." 
 
 They were given straight ; 
 Gold for the journey, and to buy a mule 
 Outside the gates through which he was to pass 
 Afoot and carelessly. The boy would stay 
 Within the castle, at the Duke's command, 
 And must have nought but ignorance to betray 
 For threats or coaxing. Once the quest performed, 
 The news delivered with some pledge of truth 
 Safe to the Duke, the juggler should go forth, 
 A fortune in his girdle, take his boy 
 And settle firm as any planted tree 
 In fair Valencia, never more to roam. 
 " Good ! good ! most worthy of a great hidalgo ! 
 And Roldan was the man ! But Annibal — 
 A monkey like no other, though morose 
 In private character, yet full of tricks — 
 'Twere hard to carry him, yet harder still 
 To leave the boy and him in company 
 
I76 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And free to slip away. The boy was wild 
 
 And shy as mountain kid ; once hid himself 
 
 And tried to run away ; and Annibal, 
 
 Who always took the lad's side (he was small, 
 
 And they were nearer of a size, and, sirs, 
 
 Your monkey has a spite against us men 
 
 For being bigger) — Annibal went too. 
 
 Would hardly know himself, were he to lose 
 
 Both boy and monkey — and 'twas property, 
 
 The trouble he had put in Annibal. 
 
 He didn't choose another man should beat 
 
 His boy and monkey. If they ran away 
 
 Some man would snap them up, and square himself 
 
 And say they were his goods — he'd taught them — no ! 
 
 He Roldan had no mind another man 
 
 Should fatten by his monkey, and the boy 
 
 Should not be kicked by any pair of sticks 
 
 Calling himself a juggler." . . . 
 
 But the Duke, 
 Tired of that hammering, signed that it should cease; 
 Bade Roldan quit all fears — the boy and ape 
 Should be safe lodged in Abderahman's tower, 
 In keeping of the great physician there, 
 The Duke's most special confidant and friend, 
 One skilled in taming brutes, and always kind. 
 The Duke himself this eve would see them lodged. 
 Roldan must go — spend no more words — but go. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 77 
 
 The Astrologer s Study. 
 
 A room high up in Abderahman's tower, 
 A window open to the still warm eve, 
 And the bright disc of royal Jupiter. 
 Lamps burning low make little atmospheres 
 Of light amid the dimness ; here and there 
 Show books and phials, stones and instruments. 
 In carved dark-oaken chair, unpillowed, sleeps 
 Right in the rays of Jupiter a small man, 
 In skull-cap bordered close with crisp grey curls, 
 And loose black gown showing a neck and breast 
 Protected by a dim-green amulet ; 
 Pale-faced, with finest nostril wont to breathe 
 Ethereal passion in a world of thought ; 
 Eyebrows jet-black and firm, yet delicate ; 
 Beard scant and grizzled; mouth shut firm, with curves 
 So subtly turned to meanings exquisite, 
 You seem to read them as you read a word 
 Full-vowelled, long-descended, pregnant — rich 
 With legacies from long, laborious lives. 
 Close by him, like a genius of sleep, 
 Purrs the grey cat, bridling, with snowy breast. 
 A loud knock. " Forward ! " in clear vocal ring. 
 Enter the Duke, Pablo, and Annibal. 
 Exit the cat, retreating toward the dark. 
 
 M 
 
178 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 You slept, Sephardo. I am come too soon. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Nay, my lord, it was I who slept too long. 
 I go to court among the stars to-night, 
 So bathed my soul beforehand in deep sleep. 
 But who are these ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Small guests, for whom I ask 
 Your hospitality. Their owner comes 
 Some short time hence to claim them. I am pledged 
 To keep them safely ; so I bring them you, 
 Trusting your friendship for small animals. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 Yea, am not I too a small animal ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I shall be much beholden to your love 
 If you will be their guardian. I can trust 
 No man so well as you. The boy 
 Will please you with his singing, touches too 
 The viol wondrously. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 1 79 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 They are welcome both. 
 Their names are ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Pablo, this — this Annibal, 
 And yet, I hope, no warrior. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 We'll make peace. 
 Come, Pablo, let us loosen our friend's chain. 
 Deign you, my lord, to sit. Pablo, here on the floor 
 Close to my chair. Now Annibal shall choose. 
 
 [The cautious monkey, in a Moorish dress, 
 
 A tunic white, turban and scimitar, 
 
 Wears these stage garments, nay, his very flesh 
 
 With silent protest ; keeps a neutral air 
 
 As aiming at a metaphysic state 
 
 'Twixt "is" and "is not;" lets his chain be loosed 
 
 By sage Sephardo's hands, sits still at first, 
 
 Then trembles out of his neutrality, 
 
 Looks up and leaps into Sephardo's lap, 
 
 And chatters forth his agitated soul, 
 
 Turning to peep at Pablo on the floor.] 
 
l8o THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 See, he declares we are at amity ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 No brother sage had read your nature faster. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Why, so he is a brother sage. Man thinks 
 Brutes have no wisdom, since they know not his : 
 Can we divine their world ? — the hidden life 
 That mirrors us as hideous shapeless power, 
 Cruel supremacy of sharp-edged death, 
 Or fate that leaves a bleeding mother robbed ? 
 Oh, they have long tradition and swift speech, 
 Can tell with touches and sharp darting cries 
 Whole histories of timid races taught 
 To breathe in terror by red-handed man. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Ah, you denounce my sport with hawk and hound. 
 
 I would not have the angel Gabriel 
 
 As hard as you in noting down my sins. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Nay, they are virtues for you warriors — 
 Hawking and hunting ! You are merciful 
 When you leave killing men to kill the brutes. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. l8l 
 
 But, for the point of wisdom, I would choose 
 To know the mind that stirs between the wings 
 Of bees and building wasps, or fills the woods 
 With myriad murmurs of responsive sense 
 And true-aimed impulse, rather than to know 
 The thoughts of warriors. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yet they are warriors too — 
 Your animals. Your judgment limps, Sephardo : 
 Death is the king of this world ; 'tis his park 
 Where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain 
 Are music for his banquet ; and the masque — 
 The last grand masque for his diversion, is 
 The Holy Inquisition. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Ay, anon 
 I may chime in with you. But not the less 
 My judgment has firm feet. Though death were 
 
 king, 
 And cruelty his right-hand minister, 
 Pity insurgent in some human breasts 
 Makes spiritual empire, reigns supreme 
 As persecuted faith in faithful hearts. 
 Your small physician, weighing ninety pounds, 
 A petty morsel for a healthy shark, 
 Will worship mercy throned within his soul 
 
1 82 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Though all the luminous angels of the stars 
 Burst into cruel chorus on his ear, 
 Singing, " We know no mercy." He would cry 
 " I know it" still, and soothe the frightened bird 
 And feed the child a-hungered, walk abreast 
 Of persecuted men, and keep most hate 
 For rational torturers. There I stand firm. 
 But you are bitter, and my speech rolls on 
 Out of your note. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, no, I follow you. 
 I too have that within which I will worship 
 In spite of . . . Yes, Sephardo, I am bitter. 
 I need your counsel, foresight, all your aid. 
 Lay these small guests to bed, then we will talk. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 See, they are sleeping now. The boy has made 
 My leg his pillow. For my brother sage, 
 He'll never heed us ; he knit long ago 
 A sound ape-system, wherein men are brutes 
 Emitting doubtful noises. Pray, my lord, 
 Unlade what burthens you : my ear and hand 
 Are servants of a heart much bound to you. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 Yes, yours is love that roots in gifts bestowed 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 83 
 
 By you on others, and will thrive the more 
 The more it gives. I have a double want : 
 First a confessor — not a Catholic ; 
 A heart without a livery — naked manhood. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 My lord, I will be frank, there's no such thing 
 
 As naked manhood. If the stars look down 
 
 On any mortal of our shape, whose strength 
 
 Is to judge all things without preference, 
 
 He is a monster, not a faithful man. 
 
 While my heart beats, it shall wear livery — 
 
 My people's livery, whose yellow badge 
 
 Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say 
 
 Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile : 
 
 That suits the rich marranos ; but to me 
 
 My father is first father and then man. 
 
 So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass. 
 
 'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic, 
 
 But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew, 
 
 Willing to serve Don Silva. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Oft you sing 
 Another strain, and melt distinctions down 
 As no more real than the wall of dark 
 Seen by small fishes' eyes, that pierce a span 
 In the wide ocean. Now you league yourself 
 
1 84 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To hem me, hold me prisoner in bonds 
 Made, say you — how ? — by God or Demiurge, 
 By spirit or flesh — I care not ! Love was made 
 Stronger than bonds, and where they press must break 
 
 them. 
 I came to you that I might breathe at large, 
 And now you stifle me with talk of birth, 
 Of race and livery. Yet you knew Fedalma. 
 She was your friend, Sephardo. And you know 
 She is gone from me — know the hounds are loosed 
 To dog me if I seek her. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Yes, I know. 
 Forgive me that I used untimely speech, 
 Pressing a bruise. I loved her well, my lord : 
 A woman mixed of such fine elements 
 That were all virtue and religion dead 
 She'd make them newly, being what she was. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Was ? say not was, Sephardo ! She still lives — 
 
 Is, and is mine ; and I will not renounce 
 
 What heaven, nay, what she gave me. I will sin, 
 
 If sin I must, to win my life again. 
 
 The fault lie with those powers who have embroiled 
 
 The world in hopeless conflict, where all truth 
 
 Fights manacled with falsehood, and all good 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 85 
 
 Makes but one palpitating life with evil. 
 
 (Don Silv a pauses. Sephardo is silent) 
 Sephardo, speak ! am I not justified ? 
 You taught my mind to use the wing that soars 
 Above the petty fences of the herd : 
 Now, when I need your doctrine, you are dumb. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Patience ! Hidalgos want interpreters 
 Of untold dreams and riddles ; they insist 
 On horoscopes without a date, on formulas 
 To raise a possible spirit, nowhere named. 
 Science must be their wishing-cap, and all the stars 
 Speak plainer for high largesse. No, my lord ! 
 I cannot counsel you to unknown deeds. 
 Thus much I can divine : you wish to find 
 Her whom you love — to make a secret search. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 That is begun already : a messenger 
 Unknown to all has been despatched this night. 
 But forecast must be used, a plan devised, 
 Ready for service when my scout returns, 
 Bringing the invisible thread to guide my steps 
 Toward that lost self my life is aching with. 
 Sephardo, I will go : and I must go 
 Unseen by all save you ; though, at our need, 
 We may trust Alvar. 
 
1 86 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 A grave task, my lord. 
 Have you a shapen purpose, or mere will 
 That sees the end alone and not the means ? 
 Resolve will melt no rocks. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 But it can scale them. 
 This fortress has two private issues : one, 
 Which served the Gypsies' flight, to me is closed : 
 Our bands must watch the outlet, now betrayed 
 To cunning enemies. Remains one other, 
 Known to no man save me : a secret left 
 As heirloom in our house : a secret safe 
 Even from him — from Father Isidor. 
 'Tis he who forces me to use it — he : 
 All's virtue that cheats bloodhounds. Hear, Seph- 
 ardo. 
 Given, my scout returns and brings me news 
 I can straight act on, I shall want your aid. 
 The issue lies below this tower, your fastness, 
 Where, by my charter, you rule absolute. 
 I shall feign illness ; you with mystic air 
 Must speak of treatment asking vigilance 
 (Nay I am ill — my life has half ebbed out). 
 I shall be whimsical, devolve command 
 On Don Diego, speak of poisoning, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 87 
 
 Insist on being lodged within th;s tower, 
 And rid myself of tendance save from you 
 And perhaps from Alvar. So I shall escape 
 Unseen by spies, shall win the days I need 
 To ransom her and have her safe enshrined. 
 No matter, were my flight disclosed at last : 
 I shall come back as from a duel fought 
 Which no man can undo. Now you know all. 
 Say, can I count on you, Sephardo ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 For faithfulness 
 In aught that I may promise, yes, my lord. 
 But — for a pledge of faithfulness — this warning. 
 I will betray nought for your personal harm : 
 I love you. But note this — I am a Jew ; 
 And while the Christian persecutes my race, 
 I'll turn at need even the Christian's trust 
 Into a weapon and a shield for Jews. 
 Shall Cruelty crowned — wielding the savage force 
 Of multitudes, and calling savageness God 
 Who gives it victory — upbraid deceit 
 And ask for faithfulness ? I love you well. 
 You are my friend. But yet you are a Christian, 
 Whose birth has bound you to the Catholic kings. 
 There may come moments when to share my joy 
 Would make you traitor, when to share your grief 
 Would make me other than a Jew .... 
 
1 88 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 What need 
 To urge that now, Sephardo ? I am one 
 Of many Spanish nobles who detest 
 The roaring bigotry of the herd, would fain 
 Dash from the lips of king and queen the cup 
 Filled with besotting venom, half infused 
 By avarice and half by priests. And now — 
 Now when the cruelty you flout me with 
 Pierces me too in the apple of my eye, 
 Now when my kinship scorches me like hate 
 Flashed from a mother's eye, you choose this time 
 To talk of birth as of inherited rage 
 Deep-down, volcanic, fatal, bursting forth 
 From underhard-taught reason ? Wondrous friendship ! 
 My uncle Isidor's echo, mocking me, 
 From the opposing quarter of the heavens, 
 With iteration of the thing I know, 
 That I'm a Christian knight and Spanish noble ! 
 The consequence ? Why, that I know. It lies 
 In my own hands and not on raven tongues. 
 The knight and noble shall not wear the chain 
 Of false-linked thoughts in brains of other men. 
 What question was there 'twixt us two, of aught 
 That makes division ? When I come to you 
 I come for other doctrine than the Prior's. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 1 89 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 My lord, you are o'erwrought by pain. My words, 
 
 That carried innocent meaning, do but float 
 
 Like little emptied cups upon the flood 
 
 Your mind brings with it. I but answered you 
 
 With regular proviso, such as stands 
 
 In testaments and charters, to forefend 
 
 A possible case which none deem likelihood ; 
 
 Just turned my sleeve, and pointed to the brand 
 
 Of brotherhood that limits every pledge. 
 
 Superfluous nicety — the student's trick, 
 
 Who will not drink until he can define 
 
 What water is and is not. But enough. 
 
 My will to serve you now knows no division 
 
 Save the alternate beat of love and fear. 
 
 There's danger in this quest — name, honour, life — 
 
 My lord, the stake is great, and are you sure .... 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, I am sure of nought but this, Sephardo, 
 That I will go. Prudence is but conceit 
 Hoodwinked by ignorance. There's nought exists 
 That is not dangerous and holds not death 
 For souls or bodies. Prudence turns its helm 
 To flee the storm and lands 'mid pestilence. 
 Wisdom must end by throwing dice with folly 
 But for dire passion which alone makes choice. 
 
190 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And I have chosen as the lion robbed 
 Chooses to turn upon the ravisher. 
 If love were slack, the Prior's imperious will 
 Would move it to outmatch him. But, Sephardo, 
 Were all else mute, all passive as sea-calms, 
 My soul is one great hunger — I must see her. 
 Now you are smiling. Oh, you merciful men 
 Pick up coarse griefs and fling them in the face 
 Of us whom life with long descent has trained 
 To subtler pains, mocking your ready balms. 
 You smile at my soul's hunger. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Science smiles 
 And sways our lips in spite of us, my lord, 
 When thought weds fact — when maiden prophecy 
 Waiting, believing, sees the bridal torch. 
 I use not vulgar measures for your grief, 
 My pity keeps no cruel feasts ; but thought 
 Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, 
 And seizing some fine thread of verity 
 Knows momentary godhead. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 And your thought ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 Seized on the close agreement of your words 
 With what is written in your horoscope. 
 
THE SrANISH GYPSY. 191 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Reach it me now. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 By your leave, Annibal. 
 {He places ANNIBAL on PABLO'S lap and rises. 
 The boy moves without zvaking, and his 
 head falls on the opposite side. SEPHARDO 
 fetches a cushion and lays Pablo's head 
 gently down upon it, then goes to reach the 
 parchment from a cabinet. Annibal, hav- 
 ing zvaked up in alarm, shuts his eyes 
 quickly again and pretends to sleep.) 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I wish, by new appliance of your skill, 
 Reading afresh the records of the sky, 
 You could detect more special augury. 
 Such chance oft happens, for all characters 
 Must shrink or widen, as our wine-skins do, 
 For more or less that we can pour in them ; 
 And added years give ever a new key 
 To fixed prediction. 
 
 Sephardo (returning with the parchment and 
 reseating himself). 
 
 True ; our growing thought 
 
192 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Makes growing revelation. But demand not 
 Specific augury, as of sure success 
 In meditated projects, or of ends 
 To be foreknown by peeping in God's scroll. 
 I say — nay, Ptolemy said it, but wise books 
 For half the truths they hold are honoured tombs- 
 Prediction is contingent, of effects 
 Where causes and concomitants are mixed 
 To seeming wealth of possibilities 
 Beyond our reckoning. Who will pretend 
 To tell the adventures of each single fish 
 Within the Syrian Sea ? Show me a fish, 
 I'll weigh him, tell his kind, what he devoured, 
 What would have devoured him — but for one Bias 
 Who netted him instead ; nay, could I tell 
 That had Bias missed him, he would not have died 
 Of poisonous mud, and so made carrion, 
 Swept off at last by some sea-scavenger ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Ay, now you talk of fishes, you get hard. 
 I note you merciful men : you can endure 
 Torture of fishes and hidalgos. Follows ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 By how much, then, the fortunes of a man 
 Are made of elements refined and mixed 
 Beyond a tunny's, what our science tells 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 93 
 
 Of the stars' influence hath contingency 
 In special issues. Thus, the loadstone draws, 
 Acts like a will to make the iron submiss ; 
 But garlick rubbing it, that chief effect 
 Lies in suspense ; the iron keeps at large, 
 And garlick is controller of the stone. 
 And so, my lord, your horoscope declares 
 Naught absolutely of your sequent lot, 
 But, by our lore's authentic rules, sets forth 
 What gifts, what dispositions, likelihoods 
 The aspects of the heavens conspired to fuse 
 With your incorporate soul. Aught else 
 Is vulgar doctrine. For the ambient, 
 Though a cause regnant, is not absolute, 
 But suffers a determining restraint 
 From action of the subject qualities 
 In proximate motion. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yet you smiled just now 
 At some close fitting of my horoscope 
 With present fact — with this resolve of mine 
 To quit the fortress ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Nay, not so ; I smiled, 
 Observing how the temper of your soul 
 Sealed long tradition of the influence shed 
 
 N 
 
194 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 By the heavenly spheres. Here is your horoscope 
 The aspects of the Moon with Mars conjunct, 
 Of Venus and the Sun with Saturn, lord 
 Of the ascendant, make symbolic speech 
 Whereto your words gave running paraphrase. 
 
 Don Silva {impatiently). 
 What did I say ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 You spoke as oft you did 
 When I was schooling you at Cordova, 
 And lessons on the noun and verb were drowned 
 With sudden stream of general debate 
 On things and actions. Always in that stream 
 I saw the play of babbling currents, saw 
 A nature o'er-endowed with opposites 
 Making a self alternate, where each hour 
 Was critic of the last, each mood too strong 
 For tolerance of its fellow in close yoke. 
 The ardent planets stationed as supreme, 
 Potent in action, suffer light malign 
 From luminaries large and coldly bright 
 Inspiring meditative doubt, which straight 
 Doubts of itself, by interposing act 
 Of Jupiter in the fourth house fortified 
 With power ancestral. So, my lord, I read 
 The changeless in the changing ; so I read 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 1 95 
 
 The constant action of celestial powers 
 Mixed into waywardness of mortal men, 
 Whereof no sage's eye can trace the course 
 And see the close. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 Fruitful result, O sage ! 
 Certain uncertainty. 
 
 SEPHARDO. 
 
 Yea, a result 
 Fruitful as seeded earth, where certainty 
 Would be as barren as a globe of gold. 
 I love you, and would serve you well, my lord. 
 Your rashness vindicates itself too much, 
 Puts harness on of cobweb theory 
 While rushing like a cataract. Be warned. 
 Resolve with you is a fire-breathing steed, 
 But it sees visions, and may feel the air 
 Impassable with thoughts that come too late, 
 Rising from out the grave of murdered honour. 
 Look at your image in your horoscope : 
 
 {Laying the horoscope before DON SlLVA.) 
 You are so mixed, my lord, that each to-day 
 May seem a maniac to its morrow. 
 
 Don Silva {pushing away the horoscope, rising 
 and turning to look out at the open window). 
 
 No! 
 
196 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 No morrow e'er will say that I am mad 
 Not to renounce her. Risks ! I know them all. 
 I've dogged each lurking, ambushed consequence. 
 I've handled every chance to know its shape 
 As blind men handle bolts. Oh, I'm too sane ! 
 I see the Prior's nets too well. He does my deed ; 
 For he has narrowed all my life to this — 
 That I must find her by some hidden means. 
 
 (He turns and stands close in front of Se- 
 PHARDO). 
 
 One word, Sephardo — leave that horoscope, 
 Which is but iteration of myself, 
 And give me promise. Shall I count on you 
 To act upon my signal ? Kings of Spain 
 Like me have found their refuge in a Jew, 
 And trusted in his counsel. You will help me ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Yes, my lord, I will help you. Israel 
 
 Is to the nations as the body's heart : 
 
 Thus saith the Book of Light : and I will act 
 
 So that no man may ever say through me 
 
 " Your Israel is nought," and make my deeds 
 
 The mud they fling upon my brethren. 
 
 I will not fail you, save — you know the terms : 
 
 I am a Jew, and not that infamous life 
 
 That takes on bastardy, will know no father, 
 
 So shrouds itself in the pale abstract, Man. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 197 
 
 You should be sacrified to Israel 
 If Israel needed it. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I fear not that. 
 I am no friend of fines and banishment, 
 Or flames that, fed on heretics, still gape, 
 And must have heretics made to feed them still. 
 I take your terms, and for the rest, your love 
 Will not forsake me. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Tis hard Roman love, 
 That looks away and stretches forth the sword 
 Bared for its master s breast to run upon. 
 But you will have it so. Love shall obey. 
 
 (DON Silva turns to the windoiv again, and is 
 silent for a feiv moments, looking at the sky.) 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 See now, Sephardo, you would keep no faith 
 To smooth the path of cruelty. Confess, 
 The deed I would not do, save for the strait 
 Another brings me to (quit my command, 
 Resign it for brief space, I mean no more) — 
 Were that deed branded, then the brand should fix 
 On him who urged me. 
 
198 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 SEPHARDO. 
 
 Will it, though, my lord ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 I speak not of the fact but of the right. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 My lord, you said but now you were resolved. 
 Question not if the world will be unjust 
 Branding your deed. If conscience has two courts 
 With differing verdicts, where shall lie the appeal ? 
 Our law must be without us or within. 
 The Highest speaks through all our people's voice, 
 Custom, tradition, and old sanctities ; 
 Or he reveals himself by new decrees 
 Of inward certitude. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 My love for her 
 Makes highest law, must be the voice of God. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 I thought, but now, you seemed to make excuse, 
 And plead as in some court where Spanish knights 
 Are tried by other laws than those of love. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 199 
 
 'Twas momentary. I shall dare it all. 
 How the great planet glows, and looks at me, 
 And seems to pierce me with his effluence ! 
 Were he a living God, these rays that stir 
 In me the pulse of wonder were in him 
 Fulness of knowledge. Are you certified, 
 Sephardo, that the astral science shrinks 
 To such pale ashes, dead symbolic forms 
 For that congenital mixture of effects 
 Which life declares without the aid of lore ? 
 If there are times propitious or malign 
 To our first framing, then must all events 
 Have favouring periods : you cull your plants 
 By signal of the heavens, then why not trace 
 As others would by astrologic rule 
 Times of good augury for momentous acts, — 
 As secret journeys ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Oh, my lord, the stars 
 Act not as witchcraft or as muttered spells. 
 I said before they are not absolute, 
 And tell no fortunes. I adhere alone 
 To such tradition of their agencies 
 As reason fortifies. 
 
200 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 A barren science ! 
 Some argue now 'tis folly. Twere as well 
 Be of their mind. If those bright stars had will — 
 But they are fatal fires, and know no love. 
 Of old, I think, the world was happier 
 With many gods, who held a struggling life 
 As mortals do, and helped men in the straits 
 Of forced misdoing. I doubt that horoscope. 
 
 (Don Silva turns from the window and reseats 
 himself opposite SEPHARDO). 
 I am most self-contained, and strong to bear. 
 No man save you has seen my trembling lip 
 Uttering her name, since she was lost to me. 
 I'll face the progeny of all my deeds. 
 
 SEPHARDO. 
 
 May they be fair ! No horoscope makes slaves. 
 Tis but a mirror, shows one image forth, 
 And leaves the future dark with endless " ifs." 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I marvel, my Sephardo, you can pinch 
 
 With confident selection these few grains, 
 
 And call them verity, from out the dust 
 
 Of crumbling error. Surely such thought creeps, 
 
 With insect exploration of the world. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 201 
 
 Were I a Hebrew, now, I would be bold. 
 Why should you fear, not being Catholic ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Lo ! you yourself, my lord, mix subtleties 
 With gross belief; by momentary lapse 
 Conceive, with all the vulgar, that we Jews 
 Must hold ourselves God's outlaws, and defy 
 All good with blasphemy, because we hold 
 Your good is evil ; think we must turn pale 
 To see our portraits painted in your hell, 
 And sin the more for knowing we are lost. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Read not my words with malice. I but meant, 
 My temper hates an over-cautious march. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 The Unnameable made not the search for truth 
 To suit hidalgos' temper. I abide 
 By that wise spirit of listening reverence 
 Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. 
 For Truth, to us, is like a living child 
 Born of two parents : if the parents part 
 And will divide the child, how shall it live ? 
 Or, I will rather say : Two angels guide 
 The path of man, both aged and yet young, 
 As angels are, ripening through endless years. 
 
202 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 On one he leans : some call her Memory 
 
 And some, Tradition ; and her voice is sweet, 
 
 With deep mysterious accords : the other, 
 
 Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams 
 
 A light divine and searching on the earth, 
 
 Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, 
 
 Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew 
 
 Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp 
 
 Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked 
 
 But for Tradition ; we walk evermore 
 
 To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. 
 
 Still we are purblind, tottering. I hold less 
 
 Than Aben-Ezra, of that aged lore 
 
 Brought by long centuries from Chaldaean plains ; 
 
 The Jew-taught Florentine rejects it all. 
 
 For still the light is measured by the eye, 
 
 And the weak organ fails. I may see ill ; 
 
 But over all belief is faithfulness, 
 
 Which fulfils vision with obedience. 
 
 So, I must grasp my morsels : truth is oft 
 
 Scattered in fragments round a stately pile 
 
 Built half of error ; and the eye's defect 
 
 May breed too much denial. But, my lord, 
 
 I weary your sick soul. Go now with me 
 
 Into the turret. We will watch the spheres, 
 
 And see the constellations bend and plunge 
 
 Into a depth of being where our eyes 
 
 Hold them no more. We'll quit ourselves and be 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 203 
 
 Red Aldebaran or bright Sirius, 
 
 And sail as in a solemn voyage, bound 
 
 On some great quest we know not. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Let us go. 
 
 She may be watching too, and thought of her 
 Sways me, as if she knew, to every act 
 Of pure allegiance. 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 That is love's perfection — 
 Tuning the soul to all her harmonies 
 So that no chord can jar. Now we will mount. 
 
204 • THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A large hall in the Castle, of Moorish architecture. 
 On the side where the windows are, an outer 
 gallery. Pages and other young gentlemen at- 
 tached to DON SlLVA's household, gathered 
 chiefly at one end of the hall. Some are moving 
 about; others are lounging on the carved benches ; 
 others, half stretched on pieces of matting and 
 carpet, are gambling. ARI AS, a stripling of fif- 
 teen, sings by snatches in a boyish treble, as he 
 walks up and down, and tosses back the nuts 
 which another youth flings towards him. In the 
 middle Don Amador, a gaunt, grey -haired 
 soldier, in a handsome uniform, sits in a marble 
 red-cushioned chair, with a large book spread out 
 on his knees, from which he is reading aloud, 
 while his voice is half-drowned by the talk that 
 is going 011 around him, first one voice and then 
 another surging above the hum. 
 
 Arias (singing). 
 
 There was a holy hermit 
 
 Who counted all things loss 
 For Christ his Masters glory : 
 
 He made an ivory cross, 
 A nd as he knelt before it 
 
 And wept his murdered Lord, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 205 
 
 The ivory turned to iron, 
 The cross became a sword. 
 
 Jose (from the floor). 
 
 I say, twenty cruzados ! thy Galician wit can never 
 count 
 
 Hernando {also from the floor). 
 And thy Sevillian wit always counts double. 
 
 Arias (singing). 
 
 The tears that fell npo7i it, 
 
 They turned to red, red rust, 
 The tears that fell from off it 
 
 Made writing in the dust. 
 The holy hermit, gazing, 
 
 Saw words upon the ground : 
 " The sword be red for ever 
 
 With the blood of false Mahound" 
 
 Don Amador (looking tip from his book, and 
 raising his voice). 
 
 What, gentlemen ! Our Glorious Lady defend us ! 
 
 ENRIQUEZ (from the benches). 
 
 Serves the infidels right ! They have sold Christians 
 enough to people half the towns in Paradise. If the 
 Queen, now, had divided the pretty damsels of Ma- 
 
206 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 laga among the Castilians who have been helping in 
 the holy war, and not sent half of them to Naples . . . 
 
 Arias {singing again). 
 
 A t the battle of Clavijo 
 In the days of King Ramiro, 
 Help us, Allah ! cried the Moslem, 
 Cried the Spaniard, Heavens chosen, 
 God and Santiago ! 
 
 Fabian. 
 
 Oh, the very tail of our chance has vanished. The 
 royal army is breaking up — going home for the win- 
 ter. The Grand Master sticks to his own border. 
 
 Arias {singing). 
 
 Straight out-flushing like the rainbow, 
 See him come, celestial Baron, 
 Mounted knight, with red-crossed banner, 
 Plunging eai'thward to the battle, 
 
 Glorious Santiago ! 
 
 HURTADO. 
 
 Yes, yes, through the pass of By-and-by, you go to 
 the valley of Never. We might have done a great 
 feat, if the Marquis of Cadiz . . . 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 207 
 
 Arias (sings). 
 
 As the flame before the swift wind. 
 See, he fires us, we burn with him ! 
 Flash our swords, dash Pagans backward- 
 Victory he ! pale fear is Allah ! 
 
 God with Santiago ! 
 
 Don Amador {raising his voice to a cry). 
 
 Sangre de Dios, gentlemen ! 
 
 (He shuts the book, and lets it fall with a bang 
 on the floor. There is instant silence?) 
 
 To what good end is it that I, who studied at 
 Salamanca, and can write verses agreeable to the 
 Glorious Lady with the point of a sword which 
 hath done harder service, am reading aloud in a 
 clerkly manner from a book which hath been 
 culled from the flowers of all books, to instruct 
 you in the knowledge befitting those who would 
 be knights and worthy hidalgos. I had as lief 
 be reading in a belfry. And gambling too ! As 
 if it were a time when we needed not the help of 
 God and the saints ! Surely for the space of one 
 hour ye might subdue your tongues to your ears, 
 that so your tongues might learn somewhat of civility 
 and modesty. Wherefore am I master of the Duke's 
 retinue, if my voice is to run along like a gutter in a 
 storm ? 
 
208 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 HURTADO {lifting up the book, and respectfully 
 presenting it to DON Amador). 
 
 Pardon, Don Amador ! The air is so commoved 
 by your voice, that it stirs our tongues in spite of us. 
 
 Don Amador [reopening the book). 
 
 Confess, now, it is a goose-headed trick, that when 
 rational sounds are made for your edification, you find 
 nought in it but an occasion for purposeless gabble. 
 I will report it to the Duke, and the reading-time 
 shall be doubled, and my office of reader shall be 
 handed over to Fray Domingo. 
 
 ( While Don Amador has been speaking, Don 
 SlLVA, with DON Alvar, has appeared 
 walking in the outer gallery on which the 
 windows are opened)) 
 
 All (in concert). 
 No, no, no. 
 
 Don Amador. 
 
 Are ye ready, then, to listen, if I finish the whole- 
 some extract from the Seven Parts, wherein the wise 
 King Alfonso hath set down the reason why knights 
 should be of gentle birth ? Will ye now be silent ? 
 
 All. 
 Yes, silent. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 20o, 
 
 Don Amador. 
 
 But when I pause, and look up, I give any leave to 
 speak, if he hath aught pertinent to say. 
 (Reads.) 
 
 " And this nobility cometh in three ways : first, by 
 lineage, secondly, by science, and thirdly, by valour 
 and worthy behaviour. Now, although they who gain 
 nobility through science or good deeds are rightfully 
 called noble and gentle ; nevertheless, they are with 
 the highest fitness so called who are noble by ancient 
 lineage, and lead a worthy life as by inheritance from 
 afar ; and hence are more bound and constrained to 
 act well, and guard themselves from error and wrong- 
 doing ; for in their case it is more true that by evil- 
 doing they bring injury and shame not only on them- 
 selves, but also on those from whom they are de- 
 rived." 
 
 DON Amador (placing his forefinger for a 
 mark on the page, and looking up, while he 
 keeps his voice raised, as wishing DON 
 SlLVA to overhear him in the judicious dis- 
 charge of his function). 
 
 Hear ye that, young gentlemen ? See ye not that 
 if ye have but bad manners even, they disgrace you 
 more than gross misdoings disgrace the low-born ? 
 Think you, Arias, it becomes the son of your house 
 
 O 
 
2IO THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 irreverently to sing and fling nuts, to the interrup- 
 tion of your elders ? 
 
 Arias {sitting on the floor, and leaning back- 
 ward on his elbows). 
 
 Nay, Don Amador ; King Alfonso, they say, was a 
 heretic, and I think that is not true writing. For 
 noble birth gives us more leave to do ill if we like. 
 
 Don Amador {lifting his brows). 
 What bold and blasphemous talk is this ? 
 
 Arias. 
 
 Why, nobles are only punished now and then, in a 
 grand way, and have their heads cut off, like the 
 Grand Constable. I shouldn't mind that. 
 
 Jose. 
 
 Nonsense, Arias! nobles have their heads cut off 
 because their crimes are noble. If they did what was 
 unknightly, they would come to shame. Is not that 
 true, Don Amador ? 
 
 Don Amador. 
 
 Arias is a contumacious puppy, who will bring dis- 
 honour on his parentage. Pray, sirrah, whom did you 
 ever hear speak as you have spoken ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 211 
 
 Arias. 
 
 Nay, I speak out of my own head. I shall go and 
 ask the Duke. 
 
 HURTADO. 
 Now, now ! you are too bold, Arias. 
 
 Arias. 
 
 Oh, he is never angry with me, — {Dropping his voice) 
 because the Lady Fedalma liked me. She said I 
 was a good boy, and pretty, and that is what you are 
 not, Hurtado. 
 
 Hurt ado. 
 Girl-face ! See, now, if you dare ask the Duke. 
 
 (DON SlLVA is just entering the hall from the 
 gallery, with ALVAR behind him, intending 
 to pass out at the other end. All rise with 
 homage. DON SlLVA bows coldly and ab- 
 stractedly. ARIAS advances from the group, 
 and goes up to DON SlLVA.) 
 
 Arias. 
 
 My lord, is it true that a noble is more dishonoured 
 than other men if he does aught dishonourable ? 
 
212 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 DON SlLVA {first blushing deeply, and grasp- 
 ing his sword, then raising his hand and 
 giving Arias a blow on the ear). 
 
 Varlet ! 
 
 Arias. 
 
 My lord, I am a gentleman. 
 (Don Silva pushes him away, and passes on 
 hurriedly.) 
 
 Don Alvar (following and turning to speak). 
 
 Go, go ! you should not speak to the Duke when 
 you are not called upon. He is ill and much distem- 
 pered. 
 
 (Arias retires, flushed, with tears in his eyes. 
 His companions look too much surprised to 
 triumph. Don Amador remains silent 
 and confused?) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 21 3 
 
 The Placa Santiago during busy market time. 
 Mules and asses laden with fruits and vege- 
 tables. Stalls aiid booths filled with wares of 
 all sorts. A crowd of buyers and sellers. A 
 stalwart woman with keen eyes, leaning, over 
 the panniers of a mule laden with apples, 
 watches LORENZO, who is lounging through 
 the market. As he approaches her, he is met 
 
 by BLASCO. 
 
 Well met, friend. 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Ay, for we are soon to part, 
 And I would see you at the hostelry, 
 To take my reckoning. I go forth to-day. 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 'Tis grievous parting with good company. 
 I would I had the gold to pay such guests 
 For all my pleasure in their talk. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Why, yes ; 
 
214 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A solid-headed man of Aragon 
 
 Has matter in him that you Southerners lack. 
 
 You like my company — 'tis natural. 
 
 But, look you, I have done my business well, 
 
 Have sold and ta'en commissions. I come straight 
 
 From — you know who — I like not naming him. 
 
 I'm a thick man : you reach not my backbone 
 
 With any tooth-pick ; but I tell you this : 
 
 He reached it with his eye, right to the marrow ! 
 
 It gave me heart that I had plate to sell, 
 
 For, saint or no saint, a good silversmith 
 
 Is wanted for God's service ; and my plate — 
 
 He judged it well — bought nobly. 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 A great man, 
 And holy ! 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Yes, I'm glad I leave to-day. 
 For there are stories give a sort of smell — 
 One's nose has fancies. A good trader, sir, 
 Likes not this plague of lapsing in the air, 
 Most caught by men with funds. And they do say 
 There's a great terror here in Moors and Jews, 
 I would say, Christians of unhappy blood. 
 Tis monstrous, sure, that men of substance lapse, 
 And risk their property. I know I'm sound. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 21 5 
 
 No heresy was ever bait to me. Whate'er 
 Is the right faith, that I believe — nought else. 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 Ay, truly, for the flavour of true faith 
 
 Once known must sure be sweetest to the taste. 
 
 But an uneasy mood is now abroad 
 
 Within the town ; partly, for that the Duke 
 
 Being sorely sick, has yielded the command 
 
 To Don Diego, a most valiant man, 
 
 More Catholic than the Holy Father's self, 
 
 Half chiding God that he will tolerate 
 
 A Jew or Arab ; though 'tis plain they're made 
 
 For profit of good Christians. And weak heads — 
 
 Panic will knit all disconnected facts — 
 
 Draw hence belief in evil auguries, 
 
 Rumours of accusation and arrest, 
 
 All air-begotten. Sir, you need not go. 
 
 But if it must be so, I'll follow you 
 
 In fifteen minutes — finish marketing, 
 
 Then be at home to speed you on your way. 
 
 Blasco. 
 
 Do so. I'll back to Saragossa straight. 
 
 The court and nobles are retiring now 
 
 And wending northward. There'll be fresh demand 
 
 For bells and images against the Spring, 
 
 When doubtless our great Catholic sovereigns 
 
2l6 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Will move to conquest of these eastern parts, 
 And cleanse Granada from the infidel. 
 Stay, sir, with God, until we meet again ! 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 Go, sir, with God, until I follow you ! 
 
 {Exit Blasco. Lorenzo passes on towards 
 the market-woman, who, as he approaches, 
 raises herself from her leaning attitude?) 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 Good day, my mistress. How's your merchandise ? 
 
 Fit for a host to buy ? Your apples now, 
 
 They have fair cheeks ; how are they at the core ? 
 
 Market-Woman. 
 
 Good, good, sir ! Taste and try. See, here is one 
 Weighs a man's head. The best are bound with tow : 
 They're worth the pains, to keep the peel from splits. 
 {She takes out an apple bound with tow, and, as 
 
 she puts it into LORENZO'S hand, speaks in 
 
 a lower tone?) 
 'Tis called the Miracle. You open it, 
 And find it full of speech. 
 
 LORENZO. 
 
 Ay, give it me, 
 I'll take it to the Doctor in the tower. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 21 7 
 
 He feeds on fruit, and if he likes the sort 
 I'll buy them for him. Meanwhile, drive your ass 
 Round to my hostelry. I'll straight be there. 
 You'll not refuse some barter ? 
 
 Market-Woman. 
 
 No, not I. 
 Feathers and skins. 
 
 Lorenzo. 
 
 Good, till we meet again. 
 
 (LORENZO, after smelling at the apple, puts it 
 into a pouch-like basket which hangs before 
 him, and walks away. The woman drives 
 off the mule}) 
 
2l8 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A Letter. 
 
 " Zarca, the chief of the Zincali, greets 
 
 " The King El Zagal. Let the force be sent 
 
 " With utmost swiftness to the Pass of Luz. 
 
 " A good five hundred added to my bands 
 
 " Will master all the garrison : the town 
 
 " Is half with us, and will not lift an arm 
 
 " Save on our side. My scouts have found a way 
 
 " Where once we thought the fortress most secure : 
 
 " Spying a man upon the height, they traced, 
 
 " By keen conjecture piecing broken sight, 
 
 " His downward path, and found its issue. There 
 
 " A file of us can mount, surprise the fort 
 
 " And give the signal to our friends within 
 
 " To ope the gates for our confederate bands, 
 
 " Who will lie eastward ambushed by the rocks, 
 
 " Waiting the night. Enough ; give me command, 
 
 " Bedmar is yours. Chief Zarca will redeem 
 
 " His pledge of highest service to the Moor : 
 
 " Let the Moor, too, be faithful and repay 
 
 " The Gypsy with the furtherance he needs 
 
 " To lead his people over Bahr el Scham 
 
 " And plant them on the shore of Africa. 
 
 " So may the King El Zagal live as one 
 
 " Who, trusting Allah wifl be true to him, 
 
 " Maketh himself as Allah true to friends." 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 QUIT now the town, and with a journeying dream 
 Swift as the wings of sound yet seeming slow 
 Through multitudinous compression of stored sense 
 And spiritual space, see walls and towers 
 Lie in the silent whiteness of a trance, 
 Giving no sign of that warm life within 
 That moves and murmurs through their hidden heart. 
 Pass o'er the mountain, wind in sombre shade, 
 Then wind into the light and see the town 
 Shrunk to white crust upon the darker rock. 
 Turn east and south, descend, then rise again 
 'Mid smaller mountains ebbing towards the plain : 
 Scent the fresh breath of the height-loving herbs 
 That, trodden by the pretty parted hoofs 
 Of nimble goats, sigh at the innocent bruise, 
 And with a mingled difference exquisite 
 Pour a sweet burthen on the buoyant air. 
 Pause now and be all ear. Far from the south, 
 
222 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Seeking the listening silence of the heights, 
 
 Comes a slow-dying sound — the Moslems' call 
 
 To prayer in afternoon. Bright in the sun 
 
 Like tall white sails on a green shadowy sea 
 
 Stand Moorish watch-towers : 'neath that eastern sky 
 
 Couches unseen the strength of Moorish Baza ; 
 
 Where the meridian bends lies Guadix, hold 
 
 Of brave El Zagal. This is Moorish land, 
 
 Where Allah lives unconquered in dark breasts 
 
 And blesses still the many-nourishing earth 
 
 With dark-armed industry. See from the steep 
 
 The scattered olives hurry in grey throngs 
 
 Down towards the valley, where the little stream 
 
 Parts a green hollow 'twixt the gentler slopes ; 
 
 And in that hollow, dwellings : not white homes 
 
 Of building Moors, but little swarthy tents 
 
 Such as of old perhaps on Asian plains, 
 
 Or wending westward past the Caucasus, 
 
 Our fathers raised to rest in. Close they swarm 
 
 About two taller tents, and viewed afar 
 
 Might seem a dark-robed crowd in penitence 
 
 That silent kneel ; but come now in their midst 
 
 And watch a busy, bright-eyed, sportive life ! 
 
 Tall maidens bend to feed the tethered goat, 
 
 The ragged kirtle fringing at the knee 
 
 Above the living curves, the shoulder's smoothness 
 
 Parting the torrent strong of ebon hair. 
 
 Women with babes, the wild and neutral glance 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 223 
 
 Swayed now to sweet desire of mothers' eyes, 
 
 Rock their strong cradling arms and chant low strains 
 
 Taught by monotonous and soothing winds 
 
 That fall at night-time on the dozing ear. 
 
 The crones plait reeds, or shred the vivid herbs 
 
 Into the caldron : tiny urchins crawl 
 
 Or sit and gurgle forth their infant joy. 
 
 Lads lying sphynx-like with uplifted breast 
 
 Propped on their elbows, their black manes tossed 
 
 back, 
 Fling up the coin and watch its fatal fall, 
 Dispute and scramble, run and wrestle fierce, 
 Then fall to play and fellowship again ; 
 Or in a thieving swarm they run to plague 
 The grandsires, who return with rabbits slung, 
 And with the mules fruit-laden from the fields. 
 Some striplings choose the smooth stones from the 
 
 brook 
 To serve the slingers, cut the twigs for snares, 
 Or trim the hazel-wands, or at the bark 
 Of some exploring dog they dart away 
 With swift precision towards a moving speck. 
 These are the brood of Zarca's Gypsy tribe ; 
 Most like an earth-born race bred by the Sun 
 On some rich tropic soil, the father's light 
 Flashing in coal-black eyes, the mother's blood 
 With bounteous elements feeding their young limbs. 
 The stalwart men and youths are at the wars 
 
224 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Following their chief, all save a trusty band 
 Who keep strict watch along the northern heights. 
 
 But see, upon a pleasant spot removed 
 
 From the camp's hubbub, where the thicket strong 
 
 Of huge-eared cactus makes a bordering curve 
 
 And casts a shadow, lies a sleeping man 
 
 With Spanish hat screening his upturned face, 
 
 His doublet loose, his right arm backward flung, 
 
 His left caressing close the long-necked lute 
 
 That seems to sleep too, leaning tow'rds its lord. 
 
 He draws deep breath secure but not unwatched. 
 
 Moving a-tiptoe, silent as the elves, 
 
 As mischievous too, trip three bare-footed girls 
 
 Not opened yet to womanhood — dark flowers 
 
 In slim long buds : some paces farther off 
 
 Gathers a little white-teethed shaggy group, 
 
 A grinning chorus to the merry play. 
 
 The tripping girls have robbed the sleeping man 
 
 Of all his ornaments. Hita is decked 
 
 With an embroidered scarf across her rags ; 
 
 Tralla, with thorns for pins, sticks two rosettes 
 
 Upon her threadbare woollen ; Hinda now, 
 
 Prettiest and boldest, tucks her kirtle up 
 
 As wallet for the stolen buttons — then 
 
 Bends with her knife to cut from off the hat 
 
 The aigrette and long feather ; deftly cuts, 
 
 Yet wakes the sleeper, who with sudden start 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 225 
 
 Shakes off the masking hat and shows the face 
 Of Juan : Hinda swift as thought leaps back, 
 But carries off the spoil triumphantly, 
 And leads the chorus of a happy laugh, 
 Running with all the naked-footed imps, 
 Till with safe survey all can face about 
 And watch for signs of stimulating chase, 
 While Hinda ties long grass around her brow 
 To stick the feather in with majesty. 
 Juan still sits contemplative, with looks 
 Alternate at the spoilers and their work. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Ah, you marauding kite — my feather gone ! 
 My belt, my scarf, my buttons and rosettes ! 
 This is to be a brother of Zincali ! 
 The fiery-blooded children of the Sun — 
 So says chief Zarca — children of the Sun ! 
 Ay, ay, the black and stinging flies he breeds 
 To plague the decent body of mankind. 
 Orpheus, professor of the gai saber, 
 Made all the brutes polite, they say, by dint of song. 
 Pregnant — but as a guide in daily life 
 Delusive. For if song and music cure 
 The barbarous trick of thieving, 'tis a cure 
 That works as slowly as old Doctor Time 
 In curing folly. Why, the minxes there 
 Have rhythm in their toes, and music rings 
 
 P 
 
226 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 As readily from them as from little bells 
 
 Swung by the breeze. Well, I will try the physic. 
 
 (He touches his lute) 
 Hem ! taken rightly, any single thing 
 The Rabbis say, implies all other things. 
 A knotty task, though, the unravelling 
 Meum and Tuum from a saraband : 
 It needs a subtle logic, nay, perhaps 
 A good large property, to see the thread. 
 
 (He touches the lute again) 
 There's more of odd than even in this world, 
 Else pretty sinners would not be let off 
 Sooner than ugly ; for if honeycombs 
 Are to be got by stealing, they should go 
 Where life is bitterest on the tongue. And yet — 
 Because this minx has pretty ways I wink 
 At all her tricks, though if a flat-faced lass, 
 With eyes askew, were half as bold as she, 
 I should chastise her with a hazel switch. 
 I'm a plucked peacock — even my voice and wit 
 Without a tail ! — why, any fool detects 
 The absence of your tail, but twenty fools 
 May not detect the presence of your wit. 
 
 (He touches his lute again) 
 Well, I must coax my tail back cunningly, 
 For to run after these brown lizards — ah ! 
 I think the lizards lift their ears at this. 
 
 (As he thrums his lute the lads and girls gradu- 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 22/ 
 
 ally approach: he touches it more briskly, 
 and Hind a, advancing, begins to move arms 
 and legs with an initiatory dancing move- 
 ment, smiling coaxingly at JUAN. He sud- 
 denly stops, lays down his lute and folds his 
 arms.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 What, you expected a tune to dance to, eh ? 
 
 HlNDA, HlTA, TRALLA, AND THE REST (clap- 
 ping their hands). 
 Yes, yes, a tune, a tune ! 
 
 JUAN. 
 
 But that is what you cannot have, my sweet brothers 
 and sisters. The tunes are all dead — dead as the 
 tunes of the lark when you have plucked his wings 
 off; dead as the song of the grasshopper when the 
 ass has swallowed him. I can play and sing no more. 
 Hinda has killed my tunes. 
 
 (All cry out in consternation. Hind A gives a 
 wail and tries to examine the lute) 
 
 Juan (waving her off). 
 
 Understand, Senora Hinda, that the tunes are in 
 me; they are not in the lute till I put them there. 
 And if you cross my humour, I shall be as tuneless 
 
228 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 as a bag of wool. If the tunes are to be brought to 
 life again, I must have my feather back. 
 
 (HlNDA kisses his hands midfeet coaxingly.) 
 No, no ! not a note will come for coaxing. The 
 feather, I say, the feather ! 
 
 (Hinda sorrowfully takes off the feather, and 
 gives it to Juan.) 
 Ah, now let us see. Perhaps a tune will come. 
 
 {He plays a measure, and the three girls begin to 
 dance; then he suddenly stops.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 No, the tune will not come : it wants the aigrette 
 (pointing to it on Hinda! s neck). 
 
 (HlNDA, with rather less hesitation, but again 
 sorrowfully, takes off the aigrette, and gives 
 it to him) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Ha ! (He plays again, but, after rather a longer time, 
 again stops.) No, no ; 'tis the buttons are wanting, 
 Hinda, the buttons. This tune feeds chiefly on but- 
 tons — a hungry tune. It wants one, two, three, four, 
 five, six. Good ! 
 
 (After Hinda has given up the buttons, and 
 Juan has laid them down o?ie by one, he 
 begins to play again, going on longer than 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 229 
 
 before, so that the dancers become excited by 
 the movement. - Then he stops.) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Ah, Hita, it is the belt, and Tralla, the rosettes — 
 both are wanting. I see the tune will not go on 
 without them. 
 
 (Hita and Tralla take off the belt and rosettes, 
 and lay them down quickly, being fired by 
 the dancing, and eager for the music. All 
 the articles lie by Juan's side on the 
 ground) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Good, good, my docile wild - cats ! Now I think 
 the tunes are all alive again. Now you may dance 
 and sing too. Hinda, my little screamer, lead off 
 with the song I taught you, and let us see if the 
 tune will go right on from beginning to end. 
 
 {He plays. The dance begins again, HlNDA 
 singing. All the other boys and girls join 
 in the chorus, and all at last dance wildly) 
 
 SONG. 
 
 All things journey : sun and moon, 
 Morning, noon, and afternoon, 
 Night and all her stars : 
 1 Twixt the east and western bars 
 
23O THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Round they journey \ 
 Come and go ! 
 
 We go with them ! 
 For to roam and ever roam 
 Is the wild ZincalVs home. 
 
 Earth is good, the hillside breaks 
 By the ashen roots and makes 
 
 Hungry nostrils glad : 
 Then we run till we are mad, 
 
 Like the horses, 
 And we cry, 
 
 None shall catch us ! 
 Swift winds wing us — we are free — 
 Drink the air — Zincali we ! 
 
 Falls the snow : the pine-branch split, 
 Call the fire out, see it flit, 
 
 Through the dry leaves run, 
 Spread and glozv, and make a sun 
 
 In the dark tent : 
 zvarm dark ! 
 
 Warm as conies ! 
 Strong fire loves us, we are warm ! 
 Who shall work Zincali harm ? 
 
 Onward journey : fires are spent ; 
 Sunward, sunward ! lift the tent, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 23 1 
 
 Run before the rain, 
 Through the pass, along the plain. 
 
 Hurry, hurry, 
 
 Lift us, wind ! 
 
 Like the horses. 
 For to roam a fid ever roam 
 Ls the wild Zincalis home. 
 
 ( When the dance is at its height, HlNDA breaks 
 away from the rest, and dances round J U AN, 
 who is now standing. As he turns a little 
 to watch her movement, some of the boys 
 skip towards the feather, aigrette, &c, 
 snatch them tip, and run away, swiftly fol- 
 lowed by HlTA, Tralla, and the rest. 
 HlNDA, as she turns again, sees them, 
 screams, and falls in her whirling ; but 
 immediately gets up, and rushes after them, 
 still screaming with rage) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Santiago ! these imps get bolder. Haha ! Senora 
 Hinda, this finishes your lesson in ethics. You 
 have seen the advantage of giving up stolen 
 goods. Now you see the ugliness of thieving when 
 practised by others. That fable of mine about the 
 tunes was excellently devised. I feel like an an- 
 cient sage instructing our lisping ancestors. My 
 
232 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 memory will descend as the Orpheus of Gypsies. 
 But I must prepare a rod for those rascals. I'll 
 bastinado them with prickly pears. It seems to me 
 these needles will have a sound moral teaching in 
 them. 
 
 (While JUAN takes a knife from his belt, and 
 surveys the prickly pear, HlNDA returns}) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Pray, Sefiora, why do you fume ? Did you want 
 to steal my ornaments again yourself? 
 
 Hind A (sobbing). 
 
 No ; I thought you would give them me back 
 again. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 What, did you want the tunes to die again ? Do 
 you like finery better than dancing ? 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 Oh, that was a tale ! I shall tell tales too, when I 
 want to get anything I can't steal. And I know 
 what I will do. I shall tell the boys I've found some 
 little foxes, and I will never say where they are till 
 they give me back the feather ! 
 
 (She runs off again.) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 233 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Hem ! the disciple seems to seize the mode sooner 
 than the matter. Teaching virtue with this prickly- 
 pear may only teach the youngsters to use a new 
 weapon ; as your teaching orthodoxy with faggots 
 may only bring up a fashion of roasting. Dios ! my 
 remarks grow too pregnant — my wits get a plethora 
 by solitary feeding on the produce of my own 
 wisdom. 
 
 (As he puts up his knife again , HlNDA comes 
 running back, and crying, " Our Queen ! 
 our Queen!" JUAN adjusts his garments 
 and his lute, while HlNDA turns to meet 
 FEDALMA, who wears a Moorish dress, 
 her black hair hanging round her in 
 plaits, a white turban on her head, a dag- 
 ger by her side. She carries a scarf 011 
 her left arm, which she holds up as a 
 shade?) 
 
 Fedalma (patting Hinda's head). 
 
 How now, wild one ? You are hot and panting. 
 
 Go to my tent, and help Nouna to plait reeds. 
 
 (HlNDA kisses Fedalma's hand, and runs off. 
 Fedalma advances towards Juan, who 
 kneels to take up the edge of her cymar, 
 and kisses it.) 
 
234 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Juan. 
 How is it with you, lady ? You look sad. 
 
 Feualma. 
 
 Oh, I am sick at heart. The eye of day, 
 
 The insistent summer sun, seems pitiless, 
 
 Shining in all the barren crevices 
 
 Of weary life, leaving no shade, no dark, 
 
 Where I may dream that hidden waters lie ; 
 
 As pitiless as to some shipwrecked man, 
 
 Who, gazing from his narrow shoal of sand 
 
 On the wide unspecked round of blue and blue, 
 
 Sees that full light is errorless despair. 
 
 The insects' hum that slurs the silent dark 
 
 Startles, and seems to cheat me, as the tread 
 
 Of coming footsteps cheats the midnight watcher 
 
 Who holds her heart and waits to hear them pause, 
 
 And hears them never pause, but pass and die. 
 
 Music sweeps by me as a messenger 
 
 Carrying a message that is not for me. 
 
 The very sameness of the hills and sky 
 
 Is obduracy, and the lingering hours 
 
 Wait round me dumbly, like superfluous slaves, 
 
 Of whom I want nought but the secret news 
 
 They are forbid to tell. And, Juan, you — 
 
 You, too, are cruel — would be over-wise 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 235 
 
 In judging your friend's needs, and choose to hide 
 Something I crave to know. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I, lady ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 You. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 I never had the virtue to hide aught, 
 
 Save what a man is whipped for publishing. 
 
 I'm no more reticent than the voluble air — 
 
 Dote on disclosure — never could contain 
 
 The latter half of all my sentences, 
 
 But for the need to utter the beginning. 
 
 My lust to tell is so importunate 
 
 That it abridges every other vice, 
 
 And makes me temperate for want of time. 
 
 I dull sensation in the haste to say 
 
 'Tis this or that, and choke report with surmise. 
 
 Judge, then, dear lady, if I could be mute 
 
 When but a glance of yours had bid me speak. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, sing such falsities ! — you mock me worse 
 By speech that gravely seems to ask belief. 
 You are but babbling in a part you play 
 
236 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To please my father. Oh, 'tis well meant, say you- 
 Pity for woman's weakness. Take my thanks. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Thanks angrily bestowed are red-hot coin 
 Burning your servant's palm. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Deny it not, 
 You know how many leagues this camp of ours 
 Lies from Bed mar — what mountains lie between — 
 Could tell me if you would about the Duke — 
 That he is comforted, sees how he gains 
 By losing the Zincala, finds how slight 
 The thread Fedalma made in that rich web, 
 A Spanish noble's life. No, that is false ! 
 He never would think lightly of our love. 
 Some evil has befallen him — he's slain — 
 Has sought for danger and has beckoned death 
 Because I made all life seem treachery. 
 Tell me the worst — be merciful — no worst, 
 Against the hideous painting of my fear, 
 Would not show like a better. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 If I speak, 
 Will you believe your slave ? For truth is scant ; 
 And where the appetite is still to hear 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 237 
 
 And not believe, falsehood would stint it less. 
 How say you ? Does your hunger's fancy choose 
 The meagre fact ? 
 
 FEDALMA {seating herself on the ground). 
 
 Yes, yes, the truth, dear Juan. 
 Sit now, and tell me all. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 That all is nought. 
 I can unleash my fancy if you wish 
 And hunt for phantoms : shoot an airy guess 
 And bring down airy likelihood — some lie 
 Masked cunningly to look like royal truth 
 And cheat the shooter, while King Fact goes free ; 
 Or else some image of reality 
 That doubt will handle and reject as false. 
 Ask for conjecture — I can thread the sky 
 Like any swallow, but, if you insist 
 On knowledge that would guide a pair of feet 
 Right to Bedmar, across the Moorish bounds, 
 A mule that dreams of stumbling over stones 
 Is better stored. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 And you have gathered nought 
 About the border wars ? No news, no hint 
 
238 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Of any rumours that concern the Duke — 
 Rumours kept from me by my father ? 
 
 Juan. 
 
 None. 
 Your father trusts no secrets to the echoes. 
 Of late his movements have been hid from all 
 Save those few hundred picked Zincali breasts 
 He carries with him. Think you he's a man 
 To let his projects slip from out his belt, 
 Then whisper him who haps to find them strayed 
 To be so kind as keep his counsel well ? 
 Why, if he found me knowing aught too much, 
 He would straight gag or strangle me, and say, 
 " Poor hound ! it was a pity that his bark 
 Could chance to mar my plans : he loved my 
 
 daughter — 
 The idle hound had nought to do but love, 
 So followed to the battle and got crushed." 
 
 FEDALMA {holding out her hand, which JUAN 
 kisses). 
 
 Good Juan, I could have no nobler friend. 
 
 You'd ope your veins and let your life-blood out 
 
 To save another's pain, yet hide the deed 
 
 With jesting — say, 'twas merest accident, 
 
 A sportive scratch that went by chance too deep — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 239 
 
 And die content with men's slight thoughts of you, 
 Finding your glory in another's joy. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Enough, great Queen ! 
 Dub not my likings virtues, lest they get 
 A drug-like taste, and breed a nausea. 
 Honey's not sweet, commended as cathartic. 
 Such names are parchment labels upon gems 
 Hiding their colour. What is lovely seen 
 Priced in a tarif ? — lapis lazuli, 
 Such bulk, so many drachmas : amethysts 
 Quoted at so much ; sapphires higher still. 
 The stone like solid heaven in its blueness 
 Is what I care for, not its name or price. 
 So, if I live or die to serve my friend, 
 'Tis for my love — 'tis for my friend alone, 
 And not for any rate that friendship bears 
 In heaven or on earth. Nay, I romance — 
 I talk of Roland and the ancient peers. 
 In me 'tis hardly friendship, only lack 
 Of a substantial self that holds a weight ; 
 So I kiss larger things and roll with them. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Oh, you will never hide your soul from me ; 
 I've seen the jewels flash, and know 'tis there, 
 Muffle it as you will. That foam-like talk 
 
24O THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Will not wash out a fear which blots the good 
 Your presence brings me. Oft I'm pierced afresh 
 Through all the pressure of my selfish griefs 
 By thought of you. It was a rash resolve 
 Made you disclose yourself when you kept watch 
 About the terrace wall : — your pity leaped 
 Seeing my ills alone and not your loss, 
 Self-doomed to exile. Juan, you must repent. 
 'Tis not in nature that resolve, which feeds 
 On strenuous actions, should not pine and die 
 In these long days of empty listlessness. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Repent ? Not I. Repentance is the weight 
 
 Of indigested meals eat yesterday. 
 
 'Tis for large animals that gorge on prey, 
 
 Not for a honey-sipping butterfly. 
 
 I am a thing of rhythm and redondillas — 
 
 The momentary rainbow on the spray 
 
 Made by the thundering torrent of men's lives : 
 
 No matter whether I am here or there ; 
 
 I still catch sunbeams. And in Africa, 
 
 Where melons and all fruits, they say, grow large, 
 
 Fables are real, and the apes polite, 
 
 A poet, too, may prosper past belief : 
 
 I shall grow epic, like the Florentine, 
 
 And sing the founding of our infant state, 
 
 Sing the Zincalo's Carthage. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 24i 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Africa ! 
 Would we were there ! Under another heaven, 
 In lands where neither love nor memory 
 Can plant a selfish hope — in lands so far 
 I should not seem to see the outstretched arms 
 That seek me, or to hear the voice that calls. 
 I should feel distance only and despair ; 
 So rest for ever from the thought of bliss, 
 And wear my weight of life's great chain unstruggling. 
 Juan, if I could know he would forget — 
 Nay, not forget, forgive me — be content 
 That I forsook him for no joy, but sorrow ; 
 For sorrow chosen rather than a joy 
 That destiny made base ! Then he would taste 
 No bitterness in sweet, sad memory, 
 And I should live unblemished in his thought, 
 Hallowed like her who dies an unwed bride. 
 Our words have wings, but fly not where we would. 
 Could mine but reach him, Juan ! 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Speak but the wish — 
 My feet have wings — I'll be your Mercury. 
 I fear no shadowed perils by the way. 
 No man will wear the sharpness of his sword 
 On me. Nay, I'm a herald of the Muse, 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Sacred for Moors and Spaniards. I will go — 
 
 Will fetch you tidings for an amulet. 
 
 But stretch not hope too strongly towards that mark 
 
 As issue of my wandering. Given, I cross 
 
 Safely the Moorish border, reach Bedmar : 
 
 Fresh counsels may prevail there, and the Duke 
 
 Being absent in the field, I may be trapped. 
 
 Men who are sour at missing larger game 
 
 May wing a chattering sparrow for revenge. 
 
 It is a chance no further worth the note 
 
 Than as a warning, lest you feared worse ill 
 
 If my return were stayed. I might be caged ; 
 
 They would not harm me else. Untimely death, 
 
 The red auxiliary of the skeleton, 
 
 Has too much work on hand to think of me ; 
 
 Or, if he cares to slay me, I shall fall 
 
 Choked with a grape-stone for economy. 
 
 The likelier chance is that I go and come, 
 
 Bringing you comfort back. 
 
 FEDALMA {starts from her seat and walks to a 
 little distance, standing a few moments with 
 her back towards JUAN, then she turns 
 round quickly, and goes towards him.) 
 
 No, Juan, no ! 
 Those yearning words come from a soul infirm, 
 Crying and struggling at the pain of bonds 
 Which yet it would not loosen. He knows all — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 243 
 
 All that he needs to know : I said farewell : 
 
 I stepped across the cracking earth and knew 
 
 'Twould yawn behind me. I must walk right on. 
 
 No, Juan, I will win nought by risking you : 
 
 The possible loss would poison hope. Besides, 
 
 'Twere treachery in me : my father wills 
 
 That we — all here — should rest within this camp. 
 
 If I can never live, like him, on faith 
 
 In glorious morrows, I am resolute. 
 
 While he treads painfully with stillest step 
 
 And beady brow, pressed 'neath the weight of arms. 
 
 Shall I, to ease my fevered restlessness, 
 
 Raise peevish moans, shattering that fragile silence ? 
 
 No ! On the close-thronged spaces of the earth 
 
 A battle rages : Fate has carried me 
 
 'Mid the thick arrows : I will keep my stand — 
 
 Not shrink and let the shaft pass by my breast 
 
 To pierce another. Oh, 'tis written large 
 
 The thing I have to do. But you, dear Juan, 
 
 Renounce, endure, are brave, unurged by aught 
 
 Save the sweet overflow of your good will. 
 
 {She seats herself again?) 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Nay, I endure nought worse than napping sheep, 
 When nimble birds uproot a fleecy lock 
 To line their nest with. See! your bondsman, Queen, 
 The minstrel of your court, is featherless ; 
 
244 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Deforms your presence by a moulting garb ; 
 Shows like a roadside bush culled of its buds. 
 Yet, if your graciousness will not disdain 
 A poor plucked songster — shall he sing to you ? 
 Some lay of afternoons — some ballad strain 
 Of those who ached once but are sleeping now 
 Under the sun-warmed flowers ? 'Twill cheat the 
 time. 
 
 Fed alma. 
 
 Thanks, Juan, later, when this hour is passed. 
 My soul is clogged with self; it could not float 
 On with the pleasing sadness of your song. 
 Leave me in this green spot, but come again, — 
 Come with the lengthening shadows. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Then your slave 
 Will go to chase the robbers. Queen, farewell ! 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Best friend, my well*spring in the wilderness ! 
 
 [While Juan sped along the stream, there came 
 From the dark tents a ringing joyous shout 
 That thrilled Fedalma with a summons grave 
 Yet welcome ; made her rise and stand, 
 All languor banished, with a soul suspense, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 245 
 
 Like one who waits high presence, listening. 
 Was it a message only, or her father's self 
 That made the camp so glad ? 
 
 It was himself! 
 She saw him now advancing, girt with arms 
 That seemed like idle trophies hung for show 
 Beside the weight and fire of living strength 
 That made his frame. He glanced with absent tri- 
 umph, 
 As one who conquers in some field afar 
 And bears off unseen spoil. But nearing her, 
 His terrible eyes intense sent forth new rays — 
 A sudden sunshine where the lightning was 
 'Twixt meeting dark. All tenderly he laid 
 His hand upon her shoulder ; tenderly, 
 His kiss upon her brow.] 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 My royal daughter ! 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Father, I joy to see your safe return. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Nay, I but stole the time, as hungry men 
 
 Steal from the morrow's meal, made a forced march, 
 
 Left Hassan as my watchdog, all to see 
 
246 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 My daughter, and to feed her famished hope 
 With news of promise. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Is the task achieved 
 That was to be the herald of our flight ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Not outwardly, but to my inward vision 
 Things are achieved when they are well begun. 
 The perfect archer calls the deer his own 
 While yet the shaft is whistling. His keen eye 
 Never sees failure, sees the mark alone. 
 You have heard nought, then — had no messenger ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 I, father ? no : each quiet day has fled 
 
 Like the same moth, returning with slow wing, 
 
 And pausing in the sunshine. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 It is well. 
 You shall not long count days in weariness. 
 Ere the full moon has waned again to new, 
 We shall reach Almen'a : Berber ships 
 Will take us for their freight, and we shall go 
 With plenteous spoil, not stolen, bravely won 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 247 
 
 By service done on Spaniards. Do you shrink ? 
 Are you aught less than a Zincala ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No; 
 But I am more. The Spaniards fostered me. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 They stole you first, and reared you for the flames. 
 I found you, rescued you, that you might live 
 A true Zincala's life ; else you were doomed. 
 Your bridal bed had been the rack. 
 
 Fedalma (in a low tone). 
 
 They meant — 
 To seize me ? — ere he came ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Yes, I know all. 
 They found your chamber empty. 
 
 Fedalma (eagerly). 
 
 Then you know — 
 (checking herself?) 
 Father, my soul would be less laggard, fed 
 With fuller trust. 
 
 Zarca. 
 My daughter, I must keep 
 
248 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The Arab's secret. Arabs are our friends, 
 
 Grappling for life with Christians who lay waste 
 
 Granada's valleys, and with devilish hoofs 
 
 Trample the young green corn, with devilish play 
 
 Fell blossomed trees, and tear up well-pruned vines : 
 
 Cruel as tigers to the vanquished brave, 
 
 They wring out gold by oaths they mean to break ; 
 
 Take pay for pity and are pitiless ; 
 
 Then tinkle bells above the desolate earth 
 
 And praise their monstrous gods, supposed to love 
 
 The flattery of liars. I will strike 
 
 The full-gorged dragon. You, my child, must watch 
 
 The battle with a heart, not fluttering 
 
 But duteous, firm-weighted by resolve, 
 
 Choosing between two lives, like her who holds 
 
 A dagger which must pierce one of two breasts, 
 
 And one of them her father's. You divine — 
 
 I speak not closely, but in parables ; 
 
 Put one for many. 
 
 FEDALMA {collecting herself and looking firmly 
 at Zarca). 
 
 Then it is your will 
 That I ask nothing ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 You shall know enough 
 To trace the sequence of the seed and flower. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 249 
 
 El Zagal trusts me, rates my counsel high : 
 He, knowing I have won a grant of lands 
 Within the Berber's realm, wills me to be 
 The tongue of his good cause in Africa, 
 So gives us furtherance in our pilgrimage 
 For service hoped, as well as service done 
 In that great feat of which lam the eye, 
 And my five hundred Gypsies the best arm. 
 More, I am charged by other noble Moors 
 With messages of weight to Telemsan. 
 Ha, your eye flashes. Are you glad ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Yes, glad 
 That men are forced to honour a Zincalo. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Oh, fighting for dear life men choose their swords 
 For cutting only, not for ornament. 
 What nought but Nature gives, man takes perforce 
 Where she bestows it, though in vilest place. 
 Can he compress invention out of pride, 
 Make heirship do the work of muscle, sail 
 Towards great discoveries with a pedigree ? 
 Sick men ask cures, and Nature serves not hers 
 Daintily as a feast. A blacksmith once 
 Founded a dynasty, and raised on high 
 
250 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The leathern apron over armies spread 
 Between the mountains like a lake of steel. 
 
 FED ALMA {bitterly). 
 
 To be contemned, then, is fair augury. 
 That pledge of future good at least is ours. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Let men contemn us : 'tis such blind contempt 
 
 That leaves the wingdd broods to thrive in warmth 
 
 Unheeded, till they fill the air like storms. 
 
 So we shall thrive — still darkly shall draw force 
 
 Into a new and multitudinous life 
 
 That likeness fashions to community, 
 
 Mother divine of customs, faith and laws. 
 
 'Tis ripeness, 'tis fame's zenith that kills hope. 
 
 Huge oaks are dying, forests yet to come 
 
 Lie in the twigs and rotten-seeming seeds. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 And our Zincali ? Under their poor husk 
 Do you discern such seed ? You said our band 
 Was the best arm of some hard enterprise ; 
 They give out sparks of virtue, then, and show 
 There's metal in their earth ? 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Ay, metal fine 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 25 I 
 
 In my brave Gypsies. Not the lithest Moor 
 Has lither limbs for scaling, keener eye 
 To mark the meaning of the farthest speck 
 That tells of change ; and they are disciplined 
 By faith in me, to such obedience 
 As needs no spy. My scalers and my scouts 
 Are to the Moorish force they're leagued withal 
 As bow-string to the bow ; while I their chief 
 Command the enterprise and guide the will 
 Of Moorish captains, as the pilot guides 
 With eye-instructed hand the passive helm. 
 For high device is still the highest force, 
 And he who holds the secret of the wheel 
 May make the rivers do what work he would. 
 With thoughts impalpable we clutch men's souls, 
 Weaken the joints of armies, make them fly 
 Like dust and leaves before the viewless wind. 
 Tell me what's mirrored in the tiger's heart, 
 I'll rule that too. 
 
 Fed alma (wrought to a glow of admiration). 
 
 O my imperial father ! 
 'Tis where there breathes a mighty soul like yours 
 That men's contempt is of good augury. 
 
 ZARCA {seizing both Fedalma'S hands, and 
 looking at her searchingly). 
 
 And you, my daughter, are you not the child 
 
252 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Of the Zincalo ? Does not his great hope 
 
 Thrill in your veins like shouts of victory ? 
 
 'Tis a vile life that like a garden pool 
 
 Lies stagnant in the round of personal loves ; 
 
 That has no ear save for the tickling lute 
 
 Set to small measures — deaf to all the beats 
 
 Of that large music rolling o'er the world : 
 
 A miserable, petty, low-roofed life, 
 
 That knows the mighty orbits of the skies 
 
 Through nought save light or dark in its own cabin. 
 
 The very brutes will feel the force of kind 
 
 And move together, gathering a new soul — 
 
 The soul of multitudes. Say now, my child, 
 
 You will not falter, not look back and long 
 
 For unfledged ease in some soft alien nest. 
 
 The crane with outspread wing that heads the file 
 
 Pauses not, feels no backward impulses : 
 
 Behind it summer was, and is no more ; 
 
 Before it lies the summer it will reach 
 
 Or perish in mid-ocean. You no less 
 
 Must feel the force sublime of growing life. 
 
 New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings ; 
 
 The widening vision is imperious 
 
 As higher members bursting the worm's sheath. 
 
 You cannot grovel in the worm's delights : 
 
 You must take winged pleasures, winged pains. 
 
 Are you not steadfast ? Will you live or die 
 
 For aught below your royal heritage ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 253 
 
 To him who holds the flickering brief torch 
 
 That lights a beacon for the perishing, 
 
 Aught else is crime. Are you a false Zincala ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Father, my soul is weak, the mist of tears 
 
 Still rises to my eyes, and hides the goal 
 
 Which to your undimmed sight is clear and changeless. 
 
 But if I cannot plant resolve on hope 
 
 It will stand firm on certainty of woe. 
 
 I choose the ill that is most like to end 
 
 With my poor being. Hopes have precarious life. 
 
 They are oft blighted, withered, snapped sheer off 
 
 In vigorous growth and turned to rottenness. 
 
 But faithfulness can feed on suffering, 
 
 And knows no disappointment. Trust in me ! 
 
 If it were needed, this poor trembling hand 
 
 Should grasp the torch — strive not to let it fall 
 
 Though it were burning down close to my flesh, 
 
 No beacon lighted yet : through the damp dark 
 
 I should still hear the cry of gasping swimmers. 
 
 Father, I will be true ! 
 
 ZARCA. 
 
 I trust that word. 
 And, for your sadness — you are young — the bruise 
 Will leave no mark. The worst of miseries 
 Is when a nature framed for noblest things 
 
254 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Condemns itself in youth to petty joys, 
 And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life 
 Gasping from out the shallows. You are saved 
 From such poor doubleness. The life we choose 
 Breathes high, and sees a full-arched firmament. 
 Our deeds shall speak like rock-hewn messages, 
 Teaching great purpose to the distant time. 
 Now I must hasten back. I shall but speak 
 To Nadar of the order he must keep 
 In setting watch and victualling. The stars 
 And the young moon must see me at my post. 
 Nay, rest you here. Farewell, my younger self — 
 Strong-hearted daughter ! Shall I live in you 
 When the earth covers me ? 
 
 Fed alma. 
 
 My father, death 
 Should give your will divineness, make it strong 
 With the beseechings of a mighty soul 
 That left its work unfinished. Kiss me now : 
 
 ( They embrace, and she adds tremulously as they 
 part) 
 And when you see fair hair be pitiful. 
 
 [Exit ZARCA. 
 
 (FEDALMA seats herself on the bank, leans her 
 
 head forward, and covers her face with her 
 
 drapery. While she is seated thus, HlNDA 
 
 comes from the bank, with a branch of musk 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 255 
 
 roses in her hand. Seeing Fed ALMA with 
 head bent and covered \ she pauses , and be- 
 gins to move on tiptoe.) 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 Our Queen ! Can she be crying ? There she sits 
 As I did every day when my dog Saad 
 Sickened and yelled, and seemed to yell so loud 
 After we'd buried him, I oped his grave. 
 
 {She comes forward on tip toe f kneels at Fe- 
 
 DALMA's feet, and embraces them. Fe- 
 
 DALMA uncovers her head.) 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Hinda ! what is it ? 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 Queen, a branch of roses — 
 So sweet, you'll love to smell them. 'Twas the last. 
 I climbed the bank to get it before Tralla, 
 And slipped and scratched my arm. But I don't 
 
 mind. 
 You love the roses — so do I. I wish 
 The sky would rain down roses, as they rain 
 From off the shaken bush. Why will it not ? 
 Then all the valley would be pink and white 
 And soft to tread on. They would fall as light 
 As feathers, smelling sweet ; and it would be 
 
256 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once ! 
 Over the sea, Queen, where we soon shall go, 
 Will it rain roses ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No, my prattler, no ! 
 It never will rain roses : when we want 
 To have more roses we must plant more trees. 
 But you want nothing, little one — the world 
 Just suits you as it suits the tawny squirrels. 
 Come, you want nothing. 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 Yes, I want more berries- 
 Red ones — to wind about my neck and arms 
 When I am married — on my ankles too 
 I want to wind red berries, and on my head. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Who is it you are fond of? Tell me, now. 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 O Queen, you know ! It could be no one else 
 But Ismael. He catches all the birds, 
 Knows where the speckled fish are, scales the rocks, 
 And sings and dances with me when I like. 
 How should I marry and not marry him ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 257 
 
 FEDALMA. 
 
 Should you have loved him, had he been a Moor, 
 Or white Castilian ? 
 
 HlNDA [starting to her feet, then kneeling again). 
 
 Are you angry, Queen ? 
 Say why you will think shame of your poor Hinda ? 
 She'd sooner be a rat and hang on thorns 
 To parch until the wind had scattered her, 
 Than be an outcast, spit at by her tribe. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Hinda, I know you are a good Zincala. 
 But would you part from Ismael ? leave him now 
 If your chief bade you — said it was for good 
 To all your tribe that you must part from him ? 
 
 Hinda [giving a sharp cry). 
 Ah, will he say so ? 
 
 FEDALMA (almost fierce in her earnestness). 
 
 Nay, child, answer me. 
 Could you leave Ismael ? get into a boat 
 And see the waters widen 'twixt you two 
 Till all was water and you saw him not, 
 And knew that you would never see him more ? 
 If 'twas your chiet's command, and if he said 
 
 R 
 
258 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Your tribe would all be slaughtered, die of plague, 
 Of famine — madly drink each other's blood . . . 
 
 HlND A {trembling). 
 
 Queen, if it is so, tell Ismael. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 You would obey, then ? part from him for ever ? 
 
 HlNDA. 
 
 How could we live else ? With our brethren lost ?- 
 No marriage feast ? The day would turn to dark. 
 Zincali cannot live without their tribe. 
 
 1 must obey ! Poor Ismael — poor Hinda ! 
 But will it ever be so cold and dark ? 
 
 Oh, I would sit upon the rocks and cry, 
 And cry so long that I could cry no more : 
 Then I should go to sleep. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No, Hinda, no! 
 Thou never shalt be called to part from him. 
 I will have berries for thee, red and black, 
 And I will be so glad to see thee glad, 
 That earth will seem to hold enough of joy 
 To outweigh all the pangs of those who part. 
 Be comforted, bright eyes. See, I will tie 
 These roses in a crown, for thee to wear. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 259 
 
 Hind A {clapping her hands, while Fed alma puts 
 the roses 011 her head). 
 
 Oh, I'm as glad as many little foxes — 
 I will find Ismael, and tell him all. 
 
 (She runs off.) 
 
 Fedalma {alone). 
 
 She has the strength I lack. Within her world 
 
 The dial has not stirred since first she woke : 
 
 No changing light has made the shadows die, 
 
 And taught her trusting soul sad difference. 
 
 For her, good, right, and law are all summed up 
 
 In what is possible : life is one web 
 
 Where love, joy, kindred, and obedience 
 
 Lie fast and even, in one warp and woof 
 
 With thirst and drinking, hunger, food, and sleep. 
 
 She knows no struggles, sees no double path : 
 
 Her fate is freedom, for her will is one 
 
 With the Zincalo's law, the only law 
 
 She ever knew. For me— Oh, I have fire within, 
 
 But on my will there falls the chilling snow 
 
 Of thoughts that come as subtly as soft flakes, 
 
 Yet press at last with hard and icy weight. 
 
 I could be firm, could give myself the wrench 
 
 And walk erect, hiding my life-long wound, 
 
 If I but saw the fruit of all my pain 
 
 With that strong vision which commands the soul, 
 
260 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And makes great awe the monarch of desire. 
 
 But now I totter, seeing no far goal : 
 
 I tread the rocky pass, and pause and grasp, 
 
 Guided by flashes. When my father comes, 
 
 And breathes into my soul his generous hope — 
 
 By his own greatness making life seem great, 
 
 As the clear heavens bring sublimity, 
 
 And show earth larger, spanned by that blue vast — 
 
 Resolve is strong : I can embrace my sorrow, 
 
 Nor nicely weigh the fruit ; possessed with need 
 
 Solely to do the noblest, though it failed — 
 
 Though lava streamed upon my breathing deed 
 
 And buried it in night and barrenness. 
 
 But soon the glow dies out, the warrior's music 
 
 That vibrated as strength through all my limbs 
 
 Is heard no longer ; over the wide scene 
 
 There's nought but chill grey silence, or the hum 
 
 And fitful discord of a vulgar world. 
 
 Then I sink helpless — sink into the arms 
 
 Of all sweet memories, and dream of bliss : 
 
 See looks that penetrate like tones ; hear tones 
 
 That flash looks with them. Even now I feel 
 
 Soft airs enwrap me, as if yearning rays 
 
 Of some far presence touched me with their warmth 
 
 And brought a tender murmuring . . . 
 
 [While she mused, 
 A figure came from out the olive trees 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 26 1 
 
 That bent close-whispering 'twixt the parted hills 
 
 Beyond the crescent of thick cactus : paused 
 
 At sight of her ; then slowly forward moved 
 
 With careful footsteps, saying in softest tones, " Fe- 
 
 DALMA ! " 
 
 Fearing lest fancy had enslaved her sense, 
 
 She quivered, rose, but turned not. Soon again : 
 
 " FEDALMA, it is SlLVA ! " Then she turned. 
 
 He, with bared head and arms entreating, beamed 
 
 Like morning on her. Vision held her still 
 
 One moment, then with gliding motion swift, 
 
 Inevitable as the melting stream's, 
 
 She found her rest within his circling arms.] 
 
 Fedalma. 
 O love, you are living, and believe in me ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Once more we are together. Wishing dies — 
 Stifled with bliss. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 You did not hate me, then — 
 Think me an ingrate — think my love was small 
 That I forsook you ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Dear, I trusted you 
 
262 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 As holy men trust God. You could do nought 
 That was not pure and loving — though the deed 
 Might pierce me unto death. You had less trust, 
 Since you suspected mine. 'Twas wicked doubt. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, when I saw you hating me, the blame 
 Seemed in my lot alone — the poor Zincala's — her 
 On whom you lavished all your wealth of love 
 As price of nought but sorrow. Then I said, 
 u 'Tis better so. He will be happier ! " 
 But soon that thought, struggling to be a hope, 
 Would end in tears. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It was a cruel thought. 
 Happier ! True misery is not begun 
 Until I cease to love thee. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Silva ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Mine ! 
 {They stand a moment or two in silence) 
 
 Fedalma. 
 I thought I had so much to tell you, love — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 263 
 
 Long eloquent stories — how it all befell— 
 The solemn message, calling me away 
 To awful spousals, where my own dead joy, 
 A conscious ghost, looked on and saw me wed. But 
 now . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Oh, that grave speech would cumber our quick souls 
 Like bells that waste the moments with their loudness. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 And if it all were said, 'twould end in this, 
 That I still loved you when I fled away. 
 'Tis no more wisdom than the little birds 
 Make known by their soft twitter when they feel 
 Each other's heart beat. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 All the deepest things 
 We now say with our eyes and meeting pulse : 
 Our voices need but prattle. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 I forget 
 All the drear days of thirst in this one draught. 
 (Again they are silent for a few moments^) 
 But tell me how you came ? Where are your 
 guards ? 
 
264 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Is there no risk ? And now I look at you, 
 This garb is strange . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 I came alone. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Alone ? 
 
 Yes — fled in secret. There was no way else 
 To find you safely. 
 
 Fedalma {letting one hand fall and moving a 
 little from him with a look of sudden terror, 
 while he clasps her more firmly by the other 
 arm), 
 
 Silva ! 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It is nought. 
 Enough that I am here. Now we will cling. 
 What power shall hinder us ? You left me once 
 To set your father free. That task is done, 
 And you are mine again. I have braved all 
 That I might find you, see your father, win 
 His furtherance in bearing you away 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 265 
 
 To some safe refuge. Are we not betrothed ? 
 You tremble . . . 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Oh, I am trembling 'neath the rush of thoughts 
 That come like griefs at morning — look at me 
 With awful faces, from the vanishing haze 
 That momently had hidden them. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 What thoughts ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Forgotten burials. There lies a grave 
 Between this visionary present and the past. 
 Our joy is dead, and only smiles on us 
 A loving shade from out the place of tombs. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Fedalma, your love faints, else aught that parts us 
 Would seem but superstition. Love supreme 
 Defies all sophistry — risks avenging fires. 
 I have risked all things. But your love is faint. 
 
 FEDALMA {retreating a little, but keeping his hand). 
 Silva, if now between us came a sword, 
 
266 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Severed my arm, and left our two hands clasped, 
 This poor maimed arm would feel the clasp till death. 
 What parts us is a sword . . . 
 
 (ZARCA has been advancing in the background. 
 He has drawn his sword, and now thrusts 
 the naked blade between them. Don SlLVA 
 lets go Fedalma's hand, and grasps his 
 sword. FEDALMA, startled at first, stands 
 firmly, as if prepared to interpose between 
 her Father and the Duke) 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Ay, 'tis a sword 
 That parts the Spaniard and the true Zincala : 
 A sword that was baptised in Christian blood, 
 When once a band, cloaking with Spanish law 
 Their brutal rapine, would have butchered us, 
 And then outraged our women. 
 
 {Resting the point of his sword on the ground) 
 
 My lord Duke, 
 I was a guest within your fortress once 
 Against my will ; had entertainment too — 
 Much like a galley slave's. Pray, have you sought 
 The poor Zincalo's camp, to find return 
 For that Castilian courtesy? or rather 
 To make amends for all our prisoned toil 
 By this great honour of your unasked presence ? 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 267 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Chief, I have brought no scorn to meet your scorn. 
 I came because love urged me — that deep love 
 I bear to her whom you call daughter — her 
 Whom I reclaim as my betrothed bride. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Doubtless you bring for final argument 
 Your men-at-arms who will escort your bride ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I came alone. The only force I bring 
 Is tenderness. Nay, I will trust besides 
 In all the pleadings of a father's care 
 To wed his daughter as her nurture bids. 
 And for your tribe — whatever purposed good 
 Your thoughts may cherish, I will make secure 
 With the strong surety of a noble's power : 
 My wealth shall be your treasury. 
 
 Zarca {with irony). 
 
 My thanks ! 
 To me you offer liberal price ; for her 
 Your love's beseeching will be force supreme. 
 She will go with you as a willing slave, 
 Will give a word of parting to her father, 
 Wave farewells to her tribe, then turn and say, 
 
268 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 " Now, my lord, I am nothing but your bride ; 
 I am quite culled, have neither root nor trunk, 
 Now wear me with your plume ! " 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yours is the wrong 
 Feigning in me one thought of her below 
 The highest homage. I would make my rank 
 The pedestal of her worth ; a noble's sword, 
 A noble's honour, her defence ; his love 
 The life-long sanctuary of her womanhood. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 I tell you, were you King of Aragon, 
 
 And won my daughter's hand, your higher rank 
 
 Would blacken her dishonour. 'Twere excuse 
 
 If you were beggared, homeless, spit upon, 
 
 And so made even with her people's lot ; 
 
 For then she would be lured by want, not wealth, 
 
 To be a wife amongst an alien race 
 
 To whom her tribe owes curses. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Such blind hate 
 Is fit for beasts of prey, but not for men. 
 My hostile acts against you, should but count 
 As ignorant strokes against a friend unknown ; 
 And for the wrongs inflicted on your tribe 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 269 
 
 By Spanish edicts or the cruelty 
 Of Spanish vassals, am I criminal ? 
 Love comes to cancel all ancestral hate, 
 Subdues all heritage, proves that in mankind 
 There is a union deeper than division. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Ay, 
 Such love is common : I have seen it oft — 
 Seen many women rend the sacred ties 
 That bind them in high fellowship with men, 
 Making them mothers of a people's virtue : 
 Seen them so levelled to a handsome steed 
 That yesterday was Moorish property, 
 To-day is Christian — wears new-fashioned gear, 
 Neighs to new feeders, and will prance alike 
 Under all banners, so the banner be 
 A master's who caresses. Such light change 
 You call conversion ; we Zincali call 
 Conversion infamy. Our people's faith 
 Is faithfulness ; not the rote-learned belief 
 That we are heaven's highest favourites, 
 But the resolve that being most forsaken 
 Among the sons of men, we will be true 
 Each to the other, and our common lot. 
 You Christians burn men for their heresy : 
 Our vilest heretic is that Zincala 
 Who, choosing ease, forsakes her people's woes. 
 
270 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The dowry of my daughter is to be 
 Chief woman of her tribe, and rescue it. 
 A bride with such a dowry has no match 
 Among the subjects of that Catholic Queen 
 Who would have Gypsies swept into the sea 
 Or else would have them gibbeted. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 And you, 
 Fedalma's father — you who claim the dues 
 Of fatherhood — will offer up her youth 
 To mere grim idols of your phantasy ! 
 Worse than all Pagans, with no oracle 
 To bid you, no sure good to win, 
 Will sacrifice your daughter — to no god, 
 But to a hungry fire within your soul, 
 Mad hopes, blind hate, that like possessing fiends 
 Shriek at a name ! This sweetest virgin, reared 
 As garden flowers, to give the sordid world 
 Glimpses of perfectness, you snatch and thrust 
 On dreary wilds ; in visions mad, proclaim 
 Semiramis of Gypsy wanderers ; 
 Doom, with a broken arrow in her heart, 
 To wait for death 'mid squalid savages : 
 For what ? You would be saviour of your tribe ; 
 So said Fedalma's letter ; rather say, 
 You have the will to save by ruling men, 
 But first to rule ; and with that flinty will 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 27 1 
 
 You cut your way, though the first cut you give 
 Gash your child's bosom. 
 
 {While DON Silva has been speaking, with 
 growing passion, FEDALMA has placed 
 herself between him and her Father.) 
 
 Zarca (with calm irony). 
 
 You are loud, my lord ! 
 You only are the reasonable man ; 
 You have a heart, I none. Fedalma's good 
 Is what you see, you care for; while I seek 
 No good, not even my own, urged on by nought 
 But hellish hunger, which must still be fed 
 Though in the feeding it I suffer throes. 
 Fume at your own opinion as you will : 
 I speak not now to you, but to my daughter. 
 If she still calls it good to mate with you, 
 To be a Spanish duchess, kneel at court, 
 And hope her beauty is excuse to men 
 When women whisper, " She was a Zincala ; " 
 If she still calls it good to take a lot 
 That measures joy for her as she forgets 
 Her kindred and her kindred's misery, 
 Nor feels the softness of her downy couch 
 Marred by remembrance that she once forsook 
 The place that she was born to — let her go ! 
 If life for her still lies in alien love, 
 That forces her to shut her soul from truth 
 
272 THE SPANISH GYrSY. 
 
 As men in shameful pleasures shut out day ; 
 
 And death, for her, is to do rarest deeds, 
 
 Which, even failing, leave new faith to men, 
 
 The faith in human hearts — then, let her go ! 
 
 She is my only offspring ; in her veins 
 
 She bears the blood her tribe has trusted in ; 
 
 Her heritage is their obedience, 
 
 And if I died, she might still lead them forth 
 
 To plant the race her lover now reviles 
 
 Where they may make a nation, and may rise 
 
 To grander manhood than his race can show ; 
 
 Then live a goddess, sanctifying oaths, 
 
 Enforcing right, and ruling consciences, 
 
 By law deep-graven in exalting deeds, 
 
 Through the long ages of her people's life. 
 
 If she can leave that lot for silken shame, 
 
 For kisses honeyed by oblivion — 
 
 The bliss of drunkards or the blank of fools — 
 
 Then let her go ! You Spanish Catholics, 
 
 When you are cruel, base, and treacherous, 
 
 For ends not pious, tender gifts to God, 
 
 And for men's wounds offer much oil to churches 
 
 We have no altars for such healing gifts 
 
 As soothe the heavens for outrage done on earth. 
 
 We have no priesthood and no creed to teach 
 
 That the Zincala who might save her race 
 
 And yet abandons it, may cleanse that blot, 
 
 And mend the curse her life has been to men, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 273 
 
 By saving her own soul. Her one base choice 
 Is wrong unchangeable, is poison shed 
 Where men must drink, shed by her poisoning will. 
 Now choose, Fedalma ! 
 
 [But her choice was made. 
 Slowly, while yet her father spoke, she moved 
 From where oblique with deprecating arms 
 She stood between the two who swayed her heart : 
 Slowly she moved to choose sublimer pain ; 
 Yearning, yet shrinking ; wrought upon by awe, 
 Her own brief life seeming a little isle 
 Remote through visions of a wider world 
 With fates close-crowded ; firm to slay her joy 
 That cut her heart with smiles beneath the knife, 
 Like a sweet babe foredoomed by prophecy. 
 She stood apart, yet near her father : stood 
 Hand clutching hand, her limbs all tense with will 
 That strove against her anguish, eyes that seemed a 
 
 soul 
 Yearning in death towards him she loved and left. 
 He faced her, pale with passion and a will 
 Fierce to resist whatever might seem strong 
 And ask him to submit : he saw one end — 
 He must be conqueror ; be monarch of his lot 
 And not its tributary. But she spoke 
 Tenderly, pleadingly.] 
 
274 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 My lord, farewell ! 
 'Twas well we met once more ; now we must part. 
 I think we had the chief of all love's joys 
 Only in knowing that we loved each other. 
 
 SlLVA. 
 
 I thought we loved with love that clings till death, 
 Clings as brute mothers bleeding to their young, 
 Still sheltering, clutching it, though it were dead ; 
 Taking the death-wound sooner than divide. 
 I thought we loved so. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Silva, it is fate. 
 Great Fate has made me heiress of this woe. 
 You must forgive Fedalma all her debt : 
 She is quite beggared : if she gave herself, 
 'Twould be a self corrupt with stifled thoughts 
 Of a forsaken better. It is truth 
 My father speaks : the Spanish noble's wife 
 Would be a false Zincala. I will bear 
 The heavy trust of my inheritance. 
 See, 'twas my people's life that throbbed in me ; 
 An unknown need stirred darkly in my soul, 
 And made me restless even in my bliss. 
 Oh, all my bliss was in our love ; but now 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 275 
 
 I may not taste it : some deep energy 
 Compels me to choose hunger. Dear, farewell ! 
 I must go with my people. 
 
 [She stretched forth 
 Her tender hands, that oft had lain in his, 
 The hands he knew so well, that sight of them 
 Seemed like their touch. But he stood still as death ; 
 Locked motionless by forces opposite : 
 His frustrate hopes still battled with despair; 
 His will was prisoner to the double grasp 
 Of rage and hesitancy. All the travelled way 
 Behind him he had trodden confident, 
 Ruling munificently in his thought 
 This Gypsy father. Now the father stood 
 Present and silent and unchangeable 
 As a celestial portent. Backward lay 
 The traversed road, the town's forsaken wall, 
 The risk, the daring ; all around him now 
 Was obstacle, save where the rising flood 
 Of love close pressed by anguish of denial 
 Was sweeping him resistless ; save where she 
 Gazing stretched forth her tender hands, that hurt 
 Like parting kisses. Then at last he spoke.] 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, I can never take those hands in mine 
 Then let them go for ever ! 
 
276 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 It must be. 
 We may not make this world a paradise 
 By walking it together hand in hand, 
 With eyes that meeting feed a double strength. 
 We must be only joined by pains divine 
 Of spirits blent in mutual memories. 
 Silva, our joy is dead. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 But love still lives, 
 And has a safer guard in wretchedness. 
 Fedalma, women know no perfect love : 
 Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong ; 
 Man clings because the being whom he loves 
 Is weak and needs him, I can never turn 
 And leave you to your difficult wandering ; 
 Know that you tread the desert, bear the storm, 
 Shed tears, see terrors, faint with weariness, 
 Yet live away from you. I should feel nought 
 But your imagined pains : in my own steps 
 See your feet bleeding, taste your silent tears, 
 And feel no presence but your loneliness. 
 No, I will never leave you ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 My lord Duke, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 2*J7 
 
 I have been patient, given room for speech, 
 Bent not to move my daughter by command, 
 Save that of her own faithfulness. But now, 
 All further words are idle elegies 
 Unfitting times of action. You are here 
 With the safe-conduct of that trust you showed 
 Coming alone to the Zincalo's camp. 
 I would fain meet all trust with courtesy 
 As well as honour ; but my utmost power 
 Is to afford you Gypsy guard to-night 
 Within the tents that keep the northward lines, 
 And for the morrow, escort on your way 
 Back to the Moorish bounds. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 What if my words 
 Were meant for deeds, decisive as a leap 
 Into the current ? It is not my wont 
 To utter hollow words, and speak resolves 
 Like verses bandied in a madrigal. 
 I spoke in action first : I faced all risks 
 To find Fedalma. Action speaks again 
 When I, a Spanish noble, here declare 
 That I abide with her, adopt her lot, 
 Claiming alone fulfilment of her vows 
 As my betrothed wife. 
 
278 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 FEDALMA (wresting herself from him, and 
 standing opposite with a look of terror). 
 
 Nay, Silva, nay ! 
 You could not live so — spring from your high place . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yes, I have said it. And you, chief, are bound 
 By her strict vows, no stronger fealty 
 Being left to cancel them. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Strong words, my lord ! 
 Sounds fatal as the hammer-strokes that shape 
 The glowing metal : they must shape your life. 
 That you will claim my daughter is to say 
 That you will leave your Spanish dignities, 
 Your home, your wealth, your people, to become 
 A true Zincalo ; share our wanderings, 
 And be a match meet for my daughter's dower 
 By living for her tribe ; take the deep oath 
 That binds you to us ; rest within our camp, 
 Show yourself no more in the Spanish ranks, 
 And keep my orders. See, my lord, you lock 
 A chain of many links — a heavy chain. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 I have but one resolve : let the rest follow. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 279 
 
 What is my rank ? To-morrow it will be filled 
 
 By one who eyes it like a carrion bird, 
 
 Waiting for death. I shall be no more missed 
 
 Than waves are missed that leaping on the rock 
 
 Find there a bed and rest. Life's a vast sea 
 
 That does its mighty errand without fail, 
 
 Panting in unchanged strength though waves are 
 
 changing. 
 And I have said it : she shall be my people, 
 And where she gives her life I will give mine. 
 She shall not live alone, nor die alone. 
 I will elect my deeds, and be the liege, 
 Not of my birth, but of that good alone 
 I have discerned and chosen. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Our poor faith 
 Allows not rightful choice, save of the right 
 Our birth has made for us. And you, my lord, 
 Can still defer your choice, for some days' space. 
 I march perforce to-night ; you, if you will, 
 Under Zincalo guard, can keep the heights 
 With silent Time that slowly opes the scroll 
 Of change inevitable ; can reserve your oath 
 Till my accomplished task leaves me at large 
 To see you keep your purpose or renounce it. 
 
280 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Chief, do I hear amiss, or does your speech 
 Ring with a doubleness which I had held 
 Most alien to you ? You would put me off, 
 And cloak evasion with allowance ? No ! 
 We will complete our pledges. I will take 
 That oath which binds not me alone, but you, 
 To join my life for ever with Fedalma's. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Enough. I wrangle not — time presses. But the 
 
 oath 
 Will leave you that same post upon the heights ; 
 Pledged to remain there while my absence lasts. 
 You are agreed, my lord ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Agreed to all. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Then I will give the summons to our camp. 
 We will adopt you as a brother now, 
 In the Zincalo's fashion. 
 
 [Exit Zarca. 
 (Silva takes Fedalma's hands.) 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 28 1 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 O my lord ! 
 I think the earth is trembling : nought is firm. 
 Some terror chills me with a shadowy grasp. 
 Am I about to wake, or do you breathe 
 Here in this valley ? Did the outer air 
 Vibrate to fatal words, or did they shake 
 Only my dreaming soul ? You a Zincalo ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Is then your love too faint to raise belief 
 Up to that height? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Silva, had you but said 
 That you would die — that were an easy task 
 For you who oft have fronted death in war. 
 But so to live for me — you, used to rule — 
 You could not breathe the air my father breathes 
 His presence is subjection. Go, my lord ! 
 Fly, while there yet is time. Wait not to speak. 
 I will declare that I refused your love — 
 Would keep no vows to you . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It is too late. 
 
282 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 You shall not thrust me back to seek a good 
 Apart from you. And what good ? Why, to face 
 Your absence — all the want that drove me forth 
 To work the will of a more tyrannous friend 
 Than any uncowled father. Life at least 
 Gives choice of ills ; forces me to defy, 
 But shall not force me to a weak defiance. 
 The power that threatened you, to master me, 
 That scorches like a cave-hid dragon's breath, 
 Sure of its victory in spite of hate, 
 Is what I last will bend to — most defy. 
 Your father has a chieftain's ends, befitting well 
 A soldier's eye and arm : were he as strong 
 As the Moors' prophet, yet the prophet too 
 Had younger captains of illustrious fame 
 Among the infidels. Let him command, 
 For when your father speaks, I shall hear you. 
 Life were no gain if you were lost to me : 
 I would straight go and seek the Moorish walls, 
 Challenge their bravest, and embrace swift death. 
 The Glorious Mother and her pitying Son 
 Are not Inquisitors, else their heaven were hell. 
 Perhaps they hate their cruel worshippers, 
 And let them feed on lies. I'll rather trust 
 They love you and have sent me to defend you. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 I made my creed so, just to suit my mood 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 2#3 
 
 And smooth all hardship, till my father came 
 And taught my soul by ruling it. Since then 
 I cannot weave a dreaming happy creed 
 Where our love's happiness is not accursed. 
 My father shook my soul awake. And you — 
 What the Zincala may not quit for you, 
 I cannot joy that you should quit for her. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Oh, Spanish men are not a petty band 
 Where one deserter makes a fatal breach. 
 Men, even nobles, are more plenteous 
 Than steeds and armour ; and my weapons left 
 Will find new hands to wield them. Arrogance 
 Makes itself champion of mankind, and holds 
 God's purpose maimed for one hidalgo lost. 
 
 See where your father comes and brings a crowd 
 Of witnesses to hear my oath of love ; 
 The low red sun glows on them like a fire. 
 This seems a valley in some strange new world, 
 Where we have found each other, my Fedalma. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
BOOK IV. 
 
 Now twice the day had sunk from off the hills 
 
 While Silva kept his watch there, with the band 
 
 Of strong Zincali. When the sun was high 
 
 He slept ; then, waking, strained impatient eyes 
 
 To catch the promise of some moving form 
 
 That might be Juan — Juan who went and came 
 
 To soothe two hearts, and claimed nought for his own : 
 
 Friend more divine than all divinities, 
 
 Quenching his human thirst in others' joy. 
 
 All through the lingering nights and pale chill dawns 
 
 Juan had hovered near ; with delicate sense, 
 
 As of some breath from every changing mood, 
 
 Had spoken or kept silence ; touched his lute 
 
 To hint of melody, or poured brief strains 
 
 That seemed to make all sorrows natural, 
 
 Hardly worth weeping for, since life was short, 
 
 And shared by loving souls. Such pity welled 
 
 Within the minstrel's heart of light-tongued Juan 
 
288 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 For this doomed man, who with dream-shrouded eyes 
 Had stepped into a torrent as a brook, 
 Thinking to ford it and return at will, 
 And now waked helpless in the eddying flood, 
 Hemmed by its raging hurry. Once that thought, 
 How easy wandering is, how hard and strict 
 The homeward way, had slipped from reverie 
 Into low-murmured song ; — (brief Spanish song 
 'Scaped him as sighs escape from other men). 
 
 Push off the boat, 
 Quit, quit the shore, 
 
 The stars will guide us back : — 
 O gathering cloud, 
 O ivide, wide sea, 
 
 O waves that keep no track ! 
 
 On through the pines ! 
 The pillared woods, 
 
 Where silence breathes sweet breath : — 
 O labyrinth, 
 
 O sunless gloom, 
 
 The other side of death ! 
 
 Such plaintive song had seemed to please the Duke — 
 
 Had seemed to melt all voices of reproach 
 
 To sympathetic sadness ; but his moods 
 
 Had grown more fitful with the growing hours, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 289 
 
 And this soft murmur had the iterant voice 
 Of heartless Echo, whom no pain can move 
 To say aught else than we have said to her. 
 He spoke, impatient : " Juan, cease thy song. 
 Our whimpering poesy and small-paced tunes 
 Have no more utterance than the cricket's chirp 
 For souls that carry heaven and hell within." 
 Then Juan, lightly : " True, my lord, I chirp 
 For lack of soul ; some hungry poets chirp 
 For lack of bread. 'Twere wiser to sit down 
 And count the star-seed, till I fell asleep 
 With the cheap wine of pure stupidity." 
 And Silva, checked by courtesy : " Nay, Juan, 
 Were speech once good, thy song were best of speech. 
 I meant, all life is but poor mockery : 
 Action, place, power, the visible wide world 
 Are tattered masquerading of this self, 
 This pulse of conscious mystery : all change, 
 Whether to high or low, is change of rags. 
 But for her love, I would not take a good 
 Save to burn out in battle, in a flame 
 Of madness that would feel no mangled limbs, 
 And die not knowing death, but passing straight 
 — Well, well, to other flames — in purgatory." 
 Keen Juan's ear caught the self-discontent 
 That vibrated beneath the changing tones 
 Of life-contemning scorn. Gently he said : 
 " But with her love, my lord, the world deserves 
 
 T 
 
29O THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 A higher rate ; were it but masquerade, 
 
 The rags were surely worth the wearing ?" " Yes. 
 
 No misery shall force me to repent 
 
 That I have loved her." 
 
 So with wilful talk, 
 Fencing the wounded soul from beating winds 
 Of truth that came unasked, companionship 
 Made the hours lighter. And the Gypsy guard, 
 Trusting familiar Juan, were content, 
 At friendly hint from him, to still their songs 
 And busy jargon round the nightly fires. 
 Such sounds, the quick-conceiving poet knew, 
 Would strike on Silva's agitated soul 
 Like mocking repetition of the oath 
 That bound him in strange clanship with the tribe 
 Of human panthers, flame-eyed, lithe-limbed, fierce, 
 Unrecking of time-woven subtleties 
 And high tribunals of a phantom-world. 
 
 But the third day, though Silva southward gazed 
 
 Till all the shadows slanted towards him, gazed 
 
 Till all the shadows died, no Juan came. 
 
 Now in his stead came loneliness, and Thought 
 
 Inexorable, fastening with firm chain 
 
 What is to what hath been. Now awful Night, 
 
 Ancestral mystery of mysteries, came down 
 
 Past all the generations of the stars, 
 
 And visited his soul with touch more close 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 29 1 
 
 Than when he kept that younger, briefer watch 
 Under the church's roof beside his arms, 
 And won his knighthood. 
 
 Well, this solitude, 
 This company with the enduring universe, 
 Whose mighty silence carrying all the past 
 Absorbs our history as with a breath, 
 Should give him more assurance, make him strong 
 In all contempt of that poor circumstance 
 Called human life — customs and bonds and laws 
 Wherewith men make a better or a worse, 
 Like children playing on a barren mound 
 Feigning a thing to strive for or avoid. 
 Thus Silva urged, answering his many-voiced self, 
 Whose hungry needs, like petulant multitudes, 
 Lured from the home that nurtured them to strength, 
 Made loud insurgence. Thus he called on Thought, 
 On dexterous Thought, with its swift alchemy 
 To change all forms, dissolve all prejudice 
 Of man's long heritage, and yield him up 
 A crude fused world to fashion as he would. 
 Thought played him double ; seemed to wear the yoke 
 Of sovereign passion in the noon-day height 
 Of passion's prevalence ; but served anon 
 As tribune to the larger soul which brought 
 Loud-mingled cries from every human need 
 That ages had instructed into life. 
 He could not grasp Night's black blank mystery 
 
292 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And wear it for a spiritual garb 
 
 Creed-proof : he shuddered at its passionless touch. 
 
 On solitary souls, the universe 
 
 Looks down inhospitable ; the human heart 
 
 Finds nowhere shelter but in human kind. 
 
 He yearned towards images that had breath in them, 
 
 That sprang warm palpitant with memories 
 
 From streets and altars, from ancestral homes 
 
 Banners and trophies and the cherishing rays 
 
 Of shame and honour in the eyes of man. 
 
 These made the speech articulate of his soul, 
 
 That could not move to utterance of scorn 
 
 Save in words bred by fellowship ; could not feel 
 
 Resolve of hardest constancy to love, 
 
 The firmer for the sorrows of the loved, 
 
 Save by concurrent energies high-wrought 
 
 To sensibilities transcending sense 
 
 Through closest citizenship, and long-shared pains 
 
 Of far-off labouring ancestors. In vain 
 
 He sought the outlaw's strength, and made a right 
 
 Contemning that hereditary right 
 
 Which held dim habitations in his frame, 
 
 Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, 
 
 The voice divine of human loyalty. 
 
 At home, among his people, he had played 
 
 In sceptic ease with saints and images, 
 
 And thunders of the Church that deadened fell 
 
 Through screens of priests plethoric. Awe, unscathed 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 293 
 
 By deeper trespass, slept without a dream. 
 But for such trespass as made outcasts, still 
 The ancient Furies lived with faces new 
 And lurked with lighter slumber than of old 
 O'er Catholic Spain, the land of sacred oaths 
 That might be broken. 
 
 Now the former life 
 Of close-linked fellowship, the life that made 
 His full-formed self, as the impregnant sap 
 Of years successive frames the full-branched tree — 
 Was present in one whole ; and that great trust 
 His deed had broken turned reproach on him 
 From faces of all witnesses who heard 
 His uttered pledges ; saw him take high place 
 Centring reliance ; use rich privilege 
 That bound him like a victim-nourished god 
 To bless ; assume the Cross and take his knightly 
 
 oath 
 Mature, deliberate : faces human all, 
 And some divine as well as human : His 
 Who hung supreme, the suffering Man divine 
 Above the altar ; Hers, the Mother pure 
 Whose glance informed his masculine tenderness 
 With deepest reverence ; the Archangel armed, 
 Trampling man's enemy : all heroic forms 
 That fill the world of faith with voices, hearts, 
 And high companionship, to Silva now 
 Made but one inward and insistent world 
 
294 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 With faces of his peers, with court and hall 
 And deference, and reverent vassalage, 
 And filial pieties — one current strong, 
 The warmly mingled life-blood of his mind, 
 Sustaining him even when he idly played 
 With rules, beliefs, charges, and ceremonies 
 As arbitrary fooling. Such revenge 
 Is wrought by the long travail of mankind 
 On him who scorns it, and would shape his life 
 Without obedience. 
 
 But his warrior's pride 
 Would take no wounds save on the breast. He faced 
 The fatal crowd : " I never shall repent ! 
 If I have sinned, my sin was made for me 
 By men's perverseness. There's no blameless life 
 Save for the passionless, no sanctities 
 But have the selfsame roof and props with crime, 
 Or have their roots close interlaced with vileness. 
 If I had loved her less, been more a craven, 
 I had kept my place and had the easy praise 
 Of a true Spanish noble. But I loved, 
 And, loving, dared — not Death the warrior 
 But Infamy that binds and strips, and holds 
 The brand and lash. I have dared all for her. 
 She was my good — what other men call heaven, 
 And for the sake of it bear penances ; 
 Nay, some of old were baited, tortured, flayed 
 To win their heaven. Heaven was their good, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 295 
 
 She, mine. And I have braved for her all fires 
 
 Certain or threatened ; for I go away 
 
 Beyond the reach of expiation — far away 
 
 From sacramental blessing. Does God bless 
 
 No outlaw ? Shut his absolution fast 
 
 In human breath ? Is there no God for me 
 
 Save him whose cross I have forsaken ? — Well, 
 
 I am for ever exiled — but with her ! 
 
 She is dragged out into the wilderness ; 
 
 I, with my love, will be her providence. 
 
 I have a right to choose my good or ill, 
 
 A right to damn myself! The ill is mine. 
 
 I never will repent ! " . . . 
 
 Thus Silva, inwardly debating, all his ear 
 
 Turned into audience of a twofold mind ; 
 
 For even in tumult full-fraught consciousness 
 
 Had plenteous being for a Self aloof 
 
 That gazed and listened, like a soul in dreams 
 
 Weaving the wondrous tale it marvels at. 
 
 But oft the conflict slackened, oft strong Love 
 
 With tidal energy returning laid 
 
 All other restlessness : Fedalma came 
 
 And with her visionary presence brought 
 
 What seemed a waking in the warm spring morn 
 
 He still was pacing on the stony earth 
 
 Under the deepening night ; the fresh-lit fires 
 
 Were flickering on dark forms and eyes that met 
 
 His forward and his backward tread ; but she, 
 
296 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 She was within him, making his whole self 
 Mere correspondence with her image : sense, 
 In all its deep recesses where it keeps 
 The mystic stores of ecstasy, was transformed 
 To memory that killed the hour, like wine. 
 Then Silva said, " She, by herself, is life. 
 What was my joy before I loved her — what 
 Shall heaven lure us with, love being lost ? " — 
 For he was young. 
 
 But now around the fires 
 The Gypsy band felt freer ; Juan's song 
 Was no more there, nor Juan's friendly ways 
 For links of amity 'twixt their wild mood 
 And this strange brother, this pale Spanish duke, 
 Who with their Gypsy badge upon his breast 
 Took readier place within their alien hearts 
 As a marked captive, who would fain escape. 
 And Nadar, who commanded them, had known 
 The prison in Bedmar. So now, in talk 
 Foreign to Spanish ears, they said their minds, 
 Discussed their chiefs intent, the, lot marked out 
 For this new brother. Would he wed their queen ? 
 And some denied, saying their queen would wed 
 A true Zincalo duke — one who would join 
 Their bands in Telemsdn. But others thought 
 Young Hassan was to wed her ; said their chief 
 Would never trust this noble of Castile, 
 Who in his very swearing was forsworn. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 297 
 
 And then one fell to chanting, in wild notes 
 
 Recurrent like the moan of outshut winds, 
 
 The adjuration they were wont to use 
 
 To any Spaniard who would join their tribe : 
 
 Words of plain Spanish, lately stirred anew 
 
 And ready at new impulse. Soon the rest, 
 
 Drawn to the stream of sound, made unison 
 
 Higher and lower, till the tidal sweep 
 
 Seemed to assail the Duke and close him round 
 
 With force daemonic. All debate till now 
 
 Had wrestled with the urgence of that oath 
 
 Already broken ; now the newer oath 
 
 Thrust its loud presence on him. He stood still, 
 
 Close baited by loud-barking thoughts — fierce hounds 
 
 Of that Supreme, the irreversible Past. 
 
 The ZlNCALI sing. 
 Brother, hear and take the curse, 
 Curse of soufs and bodys throes, 
 If you hate not all our foes, 
 Cling not fast to all our woes, 
 Turn a false Zincalo ! 
 
 May you be accurst 
 
 By hunger and by thirst, 
 
 By spiked pangs, 
 
 Starvation 's fangs 
 Clutching you alone 
 When none but peering vultures hear your moan. 
 
298 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Curst by burning hands ; 
 
 Curst by aching brow, 
 
 When on sea-wide sands 
 
 Fever lays you low ; 
 By the maddened brain 
 When the running water glistens, 
 And the deaf ear listens, listens, 
 Prisoned fire within the vein, 
 On the tongue and on the lip 
 
 Not a sip 
 From the earth or skies ; 
 Hot the desert lies 
 Pressed into your anguish, 
 Narrozving earth and narrowing sky 
 Into lonely misery. 
 
 Lonely may you languish 
 Through the day and through the night, 
 Hate the darkness, hate the light, 
 Pray and find no ear, 
 Feel no brother near, 
 Till on death you cry, 
 Death who passes by, 
 And anew you groan, 
 Scaring the vultures all to leave you living lone : 
 Curst by soul's and body's throes 
 If you love the dark mens foes, 
 Cling not fast to all the dark men's woes, 
 Turn a false Zincalo ! 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 299 
 
 Swear to hate the cruel cross, 
 The silver cross ! 
 
 Glittering, laughing at the blood 
 Shed below it in a flood 
 When it glitters over Moorish porches ; 
 
 Laughing at the scent of flesh 
 When it glitters where the faggot scorches, 
 Burning life's mysterious mesh : 
 
 Blood of wandering Israel, 
 
 Blood of wandering Isma'el, 
 Blood, the drink of Christian scorn, 
 Blood of wanderers, sous of morn 
 
 Where the life of men began : 
 Swear to hate the cross ! — 
 Sign of all the wanderers foes, 
 Sign of all the wanderers woes — 
 
 Else its curse light on you ! 
 Else the curse upon you light 
 Of its sharp I'ed-sworded mighty 
 May it lie a blood-red blight 
 On all things within your sight : 
 On the white haze of the morn, 
 On the meadows and the corn, 
 On the sun and on the moon, 
 On the clearness of the noon, 
 On the darkness of the night. 
 May it fill your aching sight — 
 
300 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Red-cross sword and sword blood-red — 
 
 Till it press upon your head, 
 
 Till it lie within your brain, 
 
 Piercing sharp, a cross of pain, 
 
 Till it lie upon your heart, 
 Burning hot, a cross of fire, 
 
 Till from sense in every part 
 Pains have clustered like a stinging swarm 
 
 In the cross s form, 
 And you see nought but the cross of blood, 
 And you feel nought but the cross of fire : 
 
 Curst by all the cross s throes 
 
 If you hate not all our foes, 
 
 Cling not fast to all our woes, 
 Turn a false Zincalo ! 
 
 A fierce delight was in the Gypsies' chant : 
 They thought no more of Silva, only felt 
 Like those broad-chested rovers of the night 
 Who pour exuberant strength upon the air. 
 To him it seemed as if the hellish rhythm, 
 Revolving in long curves that slackened now, 
 Now hurried, sweeping round again to slackness, 
 Would cease no more. What use to raise his voice, 
 Or grasp his weapon ? He was powerless now, 
 With these new comrades of his future — he 
 Who had been wont to have his wishes feared 
 And guessed at as a hidden law for men. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 301 
 
 Even the passive silence of the night 
 
 That left these howlers mastery, even the moon, 
 
 Rising and staring with a helpless face, 
 
 Angered him. He was ready now to fly 
 
 At some loud throat, and give the signal so 
 
 For butchery of himself. 
 
 But suddenly 
 The sounds that travelled towards no foreseen close 
 Were torn right off and fringed into the night ; 
 Sharp Gypsy ears had caught the onward strain 
 Of kindred voices joining in the chant. 
 All started to their feet and mustered close, 
 Auguring long-waited summons. It was come : 
 The summons to set forth and join their chief. 
 Fedalma had been called already, and was gone 
 Under safe escort, Juan following her : 
 The camp — the women, children, and old men — 
 Were moving slowly southward on the way 
 To Almeria. Silva learned no more. 
 He marched perforce ; what other goal was his 
 Than where Fedalma was ? And so he marched 
 Through the dim passes and o'er rising hills, 
 Not knowing whither, till the morning came. 
 
302 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The Moorish hall in the castle at Bedmdr. The morn- 
 ing twilight dimly shews stains of blood on the 
 white marble floor ; yet there has been a careful 
 restoration of order among the sparse objects of 
 furniture. Stretched on mats lie three corpses, the 
 faces bare, the bodies covered with mantles. A 
 little way off, with rolled matting for a pillow, 
 lies ZARCA, sleeping. His chest and arms are 
 bare; his weapons, turban, mail-shirt, and other 
 upper garments lie on the floor beside him. In 
 the outer gallery Zincali are pacing, at intervals, 
 past the arched openings. 
 
 Zarca {half rising and resting his elbow 
 on the pillow while he looks round). 
 
 The morning ! I have slept for full three hours ; 
 
 Slept without dreams, save of my daughter's face. 
 
 Its sadness waked me. Soon she will be here, 
 
 Soon must outlive the worst of all the pains 
 
 Bred by false nurture in an alien home — 
 
 As if a lion in fangless infancy 
 
 Learned love of creatures that with fatal growth 
 
 It scents as natural prey, and grasps and tears, 
 
 Yet with heart-hunger yearns for, missing them. 
 
 She is a lioness. And they — the race 
 
 That robbed me of her — reared her to this pain. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 303 
 
 He will be crushed and torn. There was no help. 
 But she, my child, will bear it. For strong souls 
 Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength 
 In farthest striving action ; breathe more free 
 In mighty anguish than in trivial ease. 
 Her sad face waked me. I shall meet it soon 
 Waking . . . 
 
 (He rises and stands looking at the corpses.) 
 As now I look on these pale dead, 
 These blossoming branches crushed beneath the fall 
 Of that broad trunk to which I laid my axe 
 With fullest foresight. So will I ever face 
 In thought beforehand to its utmost reach 
 The consequences of my conscious deeds ; 
 So face them after, bring them to my bed, 
 And never drug my soul to sleep with lies. 
 If they are cruel, they shall be arraigned 
 By that true name ; they shall be justified 
 By my high purpose, by the clear-seen good 
 That grew into my vision as I grew, 
 And makes my nature's function, the full pulse 
 Of my Zincalo soul. The Catholics, 
 Arabs, and Hebrews, have their god apiece 
 To fight and conquer for them, or be bruised 
 Like Allah, and yet keep avenging stores 
 Of patient wrath. Zincali have no god 
 Who speaks to them and calls them his, unless 
 I Zarca carry living in my frame 
 
304 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The power divine that chooses them and saves. 
 
 Life and more life unto the chosen, death 
 
 To all things living that would stifle them ! 
 
 So speaks each god that makes a nation strong ; 
 
 Burns trees and brutes and slays all hindering men. 
 
 The Spaniards boast their god the strongest now ; 
 
 They win most towns by treachery, make most slaves, 
 
 Burn the most vines and men, and rob the most. 
 
 I fight against that strength, and in my turn 
 
 Slay these brave young who duteously strove. 
 
 Cruel ? ay, it is cruel. But, how else ? 
 
 To save, we kill ; each blow we strike at guilt 
 
 Hurts innocence with its shock. Men might well seek 
 
 For purifying rites ; even pious deeds 
 
 Need washing. But my cleansing waters flow 
 
 Solely from my intent. 
 
 (He turns away from the bodies to where his gar- 
 ments lie, but does not lift them.) 
 
 And she must suffer ! 
 But she has looked on the unchangeable and bowed 
 Her head beneath the yoke. And she will walk 
 No more in chilling twilight, for to-day 
 Rises our sun. The difficult night is past ; 
 We keep the bridge no more, but cross it ; march 
 Forth to a land where all our wars shall be 
 With greedy obstinate plants that will not yield 
 Fruit for their nurture. All our race shall come 
 From north, west, east, a kindred multitude, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 305 
 
 And make large fellowship, and raise inspired 
 The shout divine, the unison of resolve. 
 So I, so she, will see our race redeemed. 
 And their keen love of family and tribe 
 Shall no more thrive on cunning, hide and lurk 
 In petty arts of abject hunted life, 
 But grow heroic in the sanctioning light, 
 And feed with ardent blood a nation's heart. 
 That is my work : and it is well begun. 
 On to achievement ! 
 
 (He takes up the mail-shirt, and looks at it, then 
 throws it down again) 
 
 No, I'll none of you ! 
 To-day there'll be no fighting. A few hours, 
 And I shall doff these garments of the Moor : 
 Till then I will walk lightly and breathe high. 
 
 SEPHARDO (appearing at the archivay leading 
 into the outer gallery). 
 
 You bade me wake you . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Welcome, Doctor ; see, 
 With that small task I did but beckon you 
 To graver work. You know these corpses ? 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 Yes. 
 I would they were not corpses. Storms will lay 
 
 U 
 
306 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The fairest trees and leave the withered stumps. 
 This Alvar and the Duke were of one age, 
 And very loving friends. I minded not 
 The sight of Don Diego's corpse, for death 
 Gave him some gentleness, and had he lived 
 I had still hated him. But this young Alvar 
 Was doubly noble, as a gem that holds 
 Rare virtues in its lustre ; and his death 
 Will pierce Don Silva with a poisoned dart. 
 This fair and curly youth was Arias, 
 A son of the Pachecos ; this dark face . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Enough ! you know their names. I had divined 
 That they were near the Duke, most like had served 
 My daughter, were her friends ; so rescued them 
 From being flung upon the heap of slain. 
 Beseech you, Doctor, if you owe me aught 
 As having served your people, take the pains 
 To see these bodies buried decently. 
 And let their names be writ above their graves, 
 As those of brave young Spaniards who died well. 
 I needs must bear this womanhood in my heart — 
 Bearing my daughter there. For once she prayed — 
 'Twas at our parting — " When you see fair hair 
 Be pitiful." And I am forced to look 
 On fair heads living and be pitiless. 
 Your service, Doctor, will be done to her. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 307 
 
 Sephardo. 
 
 A service doubly dear. For these young dead, 
 And one less happy Spaniard who still lives, 
 Are offerings which I wrenched from out my heart, 
 Constrained by cries of Israel : while my hands 
 Rendered the victims at command, my eyes 
 Closed themselves vainly, as if vision lay 
 Through those poor loopholes only. I will go 
 And see the graves dug by some cypresses. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Meanwhile the bodies shall rest here. Farewell. 
 
 {Exit Sephardo.) 
 Nay, 'tis no mockery. She keeps me so 
 From hardening with the hardness of my acts. 
 This Spaniard shrouded in her love — I would 
 He lay here too that I might pity him. 
 
308 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Morning. — The Placa Santiago in Bedmdr. A 
 crowd of townsmen forming an outer circle: 
 within, Zincali and Moo?'ish soldiers drawn up 
 round the central space. On the higher ground 
 in front of the church a stake with faggots 
 heaped, and at a little distance a gibbet. Moorish 
 music. Zarca enters, wearing his gold neck- 
 lace with the Gypsy badge of the flaming torch 
 over the dress of a Moorish Captain, accompanied 
 by a small band of armed Zincali, who fall aside 
 and range tJiemselves with the other soldiers 
 while he takes his stand in front of the stake 
 and gibbet. The music ceases, and there is ex- 
 pectant silence. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Men of Bedmdr, well-wishers, and allies, 
 Whether of Moorish or of Hebrew blood, 
 Who, being galled by the hard Spaniard's yoke, 
 Have welcomed our quick conquest as release, 
 I, Zarca, the Zincalo chieftain, hold 
 By delegation of the Moorish King 
 Supreme command within this town and fort. 
 Nor will I, with false show of modesty, 
 Profess myself unworthy of this post, 
 For so I should but tax the giver's choice. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 309 
 
 And, as ye know, while I was prisoner here, 
 
 Forging the bullets meant for Moorish hearts, 
 
 But likely now to reach another mark, 
 
 I learned the secrets of the town's defence, 
 
 Caught the loud whispers of your discontent, 
 
 And so could serve the purpose of the Moor 
 
 As the edge's keenness serves the weapon's weight. 
 
 And my Zincali, lynx-eyed, lithe of limb, 
 
 Tracked out the high Sierra's hidden path, 
 
 Guided the hard ascent, and were the first 
 
 To scale the walls and brave the showering stones. 
 
 In brief, I reached this rank through service done 
 
 By thought of mine and valour of my tribe, 
 
 Yet hold it but in trust, with readiness 
 
 To lay it down ; for I and my Zincali 
 
 Will never pitch our tents again on land 
 
 The Spaniard grudges us : we seek a home 
 
 Where we may spread and ripen like the corn 
 
 By blessing of the sun and spacious earth. 
 
 Ye wish us well, I think, and are our friends ? 
 
 Crowd. 
 Long life to Zarca and his strong Zincali ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Now, for the cause of our assembling here. 
 
 Twas my command that rescued from your hands 
 
 That Spanish Prior and Inquisitor 
 
3IO THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Whom in fierce retribution you had bound 
 
 And meant to burn, tied to a planted cross. 
 
 I rescued him with promise that his death 
 
 Should be more signal in its justice — made 
 
 Public in fullest sense, and orderly. 
 
 Here, then, you see the stake — slow death by fire ; 
 
 And there a gibbet — swift death by the cord. 
 
 Now hear me, Moors and Hebrews of Bedmar, 
 
 Our kindred by the warmth of Eastern blood ! 
 
 Punishing cruel wrong by cruelty 
 
 We copy Christian crime. Vengeance is just : 
 
 Justly we rid the earth of human fiends 
 
 Who carry hell for pattern in their souls. 
 
 But in high vengeance there is noble scorn : 
 
 It tortures not the torturer, nor gives 
 
 Iniquitous payment for iniquity. 
 
 The great avenging angel does not crawl 
 
 To kill the serpent with a mimic fang ; 
 
 He stands erect, with sword of keenest edge 
 
 That slays like lightning. So too we will slay 
 
 The cruel man ; slay him because he works 
 
 Woe to mankind. And I have given command 
 
 To pile these faggots, not to burn quick flesh, 
 
 But for a sign of that dire wrong to men 
 
 Which arms our wrath with justice. While, to show 
 
 This Christian worshipper that we obey 
 
 A better law than his, he shall be led 
 
 Straight to the gibbet and to swiftest death. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 3II 
 
 For I, the chief of the Zincali, will, 
 My people shed no blood but what is shed 
 In heat of battle or in judgment strict 
 With calm deliberation on the right. 
 Such is my will, and if it please you — well. 
 
 Crowd. 
 It pleases us. Long life to Zarca ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Hark! 
 The bell is striking, and they bring even now 
 The prisoner from the fort. What, Nadar ? 
 
 NADAR {has appeared, cutting the crowd, and 
 advancing toward Zarca till he is near 
 enough to speak in an wider-tone). 
 
 Chief, 
 I have obeyed your word, have followed it 
 As water does the furrow in the rock. 
 
 Zarca. 
 Your band is here ? 
 
 Nadar. 
 Yes, and the Spaniard too. 
 
 Zarca. 
 'Twas so I ordered. 
 
312 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Nadar. 
 
 Ay, but this sleek hound, 
 Who slipped his collar off to join the wolves, 
 Has still a heart for none but kennelled brutes. 
 He rages at the taking of the town, 
 Says all his friends are butchered ; and one corpse 
 He stumbled on — well, I would sooner be 
 A dead Zincala's dog, and howl for him, 
 Than be this Spaniard. Rage has made him whiter 
 One townsman taunted him with his escape, 
 And thanked him for so favouring us. . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Enough 
 You gave him my command that he should wait 
 Within the castle, till I saw him ? 
 
 Nadar. 
 
 Yes. 
 But he defied me, broke away, ran loose 
 I know not whither ; he may soon be here. 
 I came to warn you, lest he work us harm. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Fear not, I know the road I travel by : 
 Its turns are no surprises. He who rules 
 Must humour full as much as he commands ; 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 313 
 
 Must let men vow impossibilities ; 
 
 Grant folly's prayers that hinder folly's wish 
 
 And serve the ends of wisdom. Ah, he comes ! 
 
 [Sweeping like some pale herald from the dead, 
 Whose shadow-nurtured eyes, dazed by full light, 
 See nought without, but give reverted sense 
 To the soul's imagery, Silva came, 
 The wondering people parting wide to get 
 Continuous sight of him as he passed on — 
 This high hidalgo, who through blooming years 
 Had shone on men with planetary calm, 
 Believed-in with all sacred images 
 And saints that must be taken as they were, 
 Though rendering meagre service for men's praise : 
 Bareheaded now, carrying an unsheathed sword, 
 And on his breast, where late he bore the cross, 
 Wearing the Gypsy badge ; his form aslant, 
 Driven, it seemed, by some invisible chase, 
 Right to the front of Zarca. There he paused.] 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Chief, you are treacherous, cruel, devilish ! — 
 Relentless as a curse that once let loose 
 From lips of wrath, lives bodiless to destroy, 
 And darkly traps a man in nets of guilt 
 Which could not weave themselves in open day 
 Before his eyes. Oh, it was bitter wrong 
 
3 14 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To hold this knowledge locked within your mind, 
 
 To stand with waking eyes in broadest light, 
 
 And see me, dreaming, shed my kindred's blood. 
 
 'Tis horrible that men with hearts and hands 
 
 Should smile in silence like the firmament 
 
 And see a fellow-mortal draw a lot 
 
 On which themselves have written agony ! 
 
 Such injury has no redress, no healing 
 
 Save what may lie in stemming further ill. 
 
 Poor balm for maiming ! Yet I come to claim it. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 First prove your wrongs, and I will hear your claim. 
 
 Mind, you are not commander of Bedmar, 
 
 Nor duke, nor knight, nor anything for me, 
 
 Save one Zincalo, one of my subject tribe, 
 
 Over whose deeds my will is absolute. 
 
 You chose that lot, and would have railed at me 
 
 Had I refused it you : I warned you first 
 
 What oaths you had to take . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 You never warned me 
 That you had linked yourself with Moorish men 
 To take this town and fortress of Bedmar — 
 Slay my near kinsman, him who held my place, 
 Our house's heir and guardian — slay my friend, 
 My chosen brother — desecrate the church 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 315 
 
 Where once my mother held me in her arms, 
 Making the holy chrism holier 
 With tears of joy that fell upon my brow ! 
 You never warned . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 I warned you of your oath. 
 You shrank not, were resolved, were sure your place 
 Would never miss you, and you had your will. 
 I am no priest, and keep no consciences : 
 I keep my own place and my own command. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I said my place would never miss me — yes ! 
 A thousand Spaniards died on that same day 
 And were not missed ; their garments clothed the backs 
 That else were bare. . . . 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 But you were just the one 
 Above the thousand, had you known the die 
 That fate was throwing then. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 You knew it — you ! 
 With fiendish knowledge, smiling at the end. 
 You knew what snares had made my flying steps 
 
3l6 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Murderous ; you let me lock my soul with oaths 
 Which your acts made a hellish sacrament. 
 I say, you knew this as a fiend would know it, 
 And let me damn myself. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 The deed was done 
 Before you took your oath, or reached our camp, — 
 Done when you slipped in secret from the post 
 'Twas yours to keep, and not to meditate 
 If others might not fill it. For your oath, 
 What man is he who brandishes a sword 
 In darkness, kills his friends, and rages then 
 Against the night that kept him ignorant ? 
 Should I, for one unstable Spaniard, quit 
 My steadfast ends as father and as chief; 
 Renounce my daughter and my people's hope, 
 Lest a deserter should be made ashamed ? 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Your daughter — O great God ! I vent but madness. 
 The past will never change. I come to stem 
 Harm that may yet be hindered. Chief— this stake- 
 Tell me who is to die ! Are you not bound 
 Yourself to him you took in fellowship ? 
 The town is yours ; let me but save the blood 
 That still is warm in men who were my . . . 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 317 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Peace ! 
 They bring the prisoner. 
 
 [Zarca waved his arm 
 With head averse, in peremptory sign 
 That 'twixt them now there should be space and 
 
 silence. 
 Most eyes had turned to where the prisoner 
 Advanced among his guards ; and Silva too 
 Turned eagerly, all other striving quelled 
 By striving with the dread lest he should see 
 His thought outside him. And he saw it there. 
 The prisoner was Father Isidor : 
 The man whom once he fiercely had accused 
 As author of his misdeeds — whose designs 
 Had forced him into fatal secrecy. 
 The imperious and inexorable Will 
 Was yoked, and he who had been pitiless 
 To Silva's love, was led to pitiless death. 
 O hateful victory of blind wishes — prayers 
 Which hell had overheard and swift fulfilled ! 
 The triumph was a torture, turning all 
 The strength of passion into strength of pain. 
 Remorse was born within him, that dire birth 
 Which robs all else of nurture — cancerous, 
 Forcing each pulse to feed its anguish, changing 
 All sweetest residues of a healthy life 
 
3l8 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To fibrous clutches of slow misery. 
 
 Silva had but rebelled — he was not free ; 
 
 And all the subtle cords that bound his soul 
 
 Were tightened by the strain of one rash leap 
 
 Made in defiance. He accused no more, 
 
 But dumbly shrank before accusing throngs 
 
 Of thoughts, the impetuous recurrent rush 
 
 Of all his past-created, unchanged self. 
 
 The Father came bareheaded, frocked, a rope 
 
 Around his neck, — but clad with majesty, 
 
 The strength of resolute undivided souls 
 
 Who, owning law, obey it. In his hand 
 
 He bore a crucifix, and praying, gazed 
 
 Solely on that white image. But his guards 
 
 Parted in front, and paused as they approached 
 
 The centre, where the stake was. Isidor 
 
 Lifted his eyes to look around him — calm, 
 
 Prepared to speak last words of willingness 
 
 To meet his death — last words of faith unchanged, 
 
 That, working for Christ's kingdom, he had wrought 
 
 Righteously. But his glance met Silva's eyes 
 
 And drew him. Even images of stone 
 
 Look living with reproach on him who maims, 
 
 Profanes, defiles them. Silva penitent 
 
 Moved forward, would have knelt before the man 
 
 Who still was one with all the sacred things 
 
 That came back on him in their sacredness, 
 
 Kindred, and oaths, and awe, and mystery. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 319 
 
 But, at the sight, the Father thrust the cross 
 With deprecating act before him, and his face 
 Pale-quivering, flashed out horror like white light 
 Flashed from the angel's sword that dooming drave 
 The sinner to the wilderness. He spoke.] 
 
 Father Isidor. 
 
 Back from me, traitorous and accursed man ! 
 Defile not me, who grasp the holiest, 
 With touch or breath ! Thou foulest murderer ! 
 Fouler than Cain who struck his brother down 
 In jealous rage, thou for thy base delight 
 Hast oped the gate for wolves to come and tear 
 Uncounted brethren, weak and strong alike, 
 The helpless priest, the warrior all unarmed 
 Against a faithless leader : on thy head 
 Will rest the sacrilege, on thy soul the blood. 
 These blind Zincali, misbelievers, Moors, 
 Are but as Pilate and his soldiery ; 
 Thou, Judas, weighted with that heaviest crime 
 Which deepens hell ! I warned you of this end. 
 A traitorous leader, false to God and man, 
 A knight apostate, you shall soon behold 
 Above your people's blood the light of flames 
 Kindled by you to burn me — burn the flesh 
 Twin with your father's. O most wretched man ! 
 Whose memory shall be of broken oaths — 
 Broken for lust — I turn away mine eyes 
 
320 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 For ever from you. See, the stake is ready 
 And I am ready too. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 It shall not be ! 
 {Raising his sword, he rushes in front of 
 the guards who are advancing, and 
 impedes them) 
 If you are human, Chief, hear my demand ! 
 Stretch not my soul upon the endless rack 
 Of this man's torture ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Stand aside, my lord ! 
 Put up your sword. You vowed obedience 
 To me, your chief. It was your latest vow. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No ! hew me from the spot, or fasten me 
 Amid the faggots too, if he must burn. 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 What should befall that persecuting monk 
 Was fixed before you came : no cruelty, 
 No nicely measured torture, weight for weight 
 Of injury, no luscious-toothed revenge 
 That justifies the injurer by its joy : 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 321 
 
 I seek but rescue and security 
 
 For harmless men, and such security 
 
 Means death to vipers and inquisitors. 
 
 These faggots shall but innocently blaze 
 
 In sign of gladness, when this man is dead, 
 
 That one more torturer has left the earth. 
 
 Tis not for infidels to burn live men 
 
 And ape the rules of Christian piety. 
 
 This hard oppressor shall not die by fire : 
 
 He mounts the gibbet, dies a speedy death, 
 
 That, like a transfixed dragon, he may cease 
 
 To vex mankind. Quick, guards, and clear the path ! 
 
 [As well-trained hounds that hold their fleetness tense 
 In watchful, loving fixity of dark eyes, 
 And move with movement of their master's will, 
 The Gypsies with a wavelike swiftness met 
 Around the Father, and in wheeling course 
 Passed beyond Silva to the gibbet's foot, 
 Behind their chieftain. Sudden left alone 
 With weapon bare, the multitude aloof, 
 Silva was mazed in doubtful consciousness, 
 As one who slumbering in the day awakes 
 From striving into freedom, and yet feels 
 His sense half-captive to intangible things ; 
 Then with a flush of new decision sheathed 
 His futile naked weapon, and strode quick 
 To Zarca, speaking with a voice new-toned, 
 
 x 
 
322 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The struggling soul's hoarse, suffocated cry 
 Beneath the grappling anguish of despair.] 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Zincalo, devil, blackest infidel ! 
 
 You cannot hate that man as you hate me ! 
 
 Finish your torture — take me — lift me up 
 
 And let the crowd spit at me — every Moor 
 
 Shoot reeds at me, and kill me with slow death 
 
 Beneath the mid-day fervour of the sun — 
 
 Or crucify me with a thieving hound — 
 
 Slake your hate so, and I will thank it : spare me 
 
 Only this man ! 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Madman, I hate you not. 
 But if I did, my hate were poorly served 
 By my device, if I should strive to mix 
 A bitterer misery for you than to taste 
 With leisure of a soul in unharmed limbs 
 The flavour of your folly. For my course, 
 It has a goal, and takes no truant path 
 Because of you. I am your Chief: to me 
 You are but a Zincalo in revolt. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 No, I am no Zincalo ! I disown 
 
 The name I took in madness. Here I tear 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 323 
 
 This badge away. I am a Catholic knight, 
 A Spaniard who will die a Spaniard's death ! 
 
 [Hark ! while he casts the badge upon the ground 
 
 And tramples on it, Silva hears a shout : 
 
 Was it a shout that threatened him ? He looked 
 
 From out the dizzying flames of his own rage 
 
 In hope of adversaries — and he saw above 
 
 The form of Father Isidor upswung 
 
 Convulsed with martyr throes ; and knew the shout 
 
 For wonted exultation of the crowd 
 
 When malefactors die — or saints, or heroes. 
 
 And now to him that white-frocked murdered form 
 
 Which hanging judged him as its murderer, 
 
 Turned to a symbol of his guilt, and stirred 
 
 Tremors till then unwaked. With sudden snatch 
 
 At something hidden in his breast, he strode 
 
 Right upon Zarca : at the instant, down 
 
 Fell the great Chief, and Silva, staggering back, 
 
 Heard not the shriek of the Zincali, felt 
 
 Not their fierce grasp — heard, felt but Zarca's words 
 
 Which seemed his soul outleaping in a cry 
 
 And urging men to run like rival waves 
 
 Whose rivalry is but obedience.] 
 
 Zarca (as he falls). 
 My daughter ! call her ! Call my daughter ! 
 
324 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 NADAR {supporting Zarca and crying to the 
 Gypsies who have clutched Silva). 
 
 Stay ! 
 Tear not the Spaniard, tie him to the stake : 
 Hear what the Chief shall bid us — there is time ! 
 
 [Swiftly they tied him, pleasing vengeance so 
 
 With promise that would leave them free to watch 
 
 Their stricken good, their Chief stretched helplessly 
 
 Pillowed upon the strength of loving limbs. 
 
 He heaved low groans, but would not spend his breath 
 
 In useless words : he waited till she came, 
 
 Keeping his life within the citadel 
 
 Of one great hope. And now around him closed 
 
 (But in wide circle, checked by loving fear) 
 
 His people all, holding their wails suppressed 
 
 Lest Death believed-in should be over-bold : 
 
 All life hung on their Chief — he would not die ; 
 
 His image gone, there were no wholeness left 
 
 To make a world of for Zincali's thought. 
 
 Eager they stood, but hushed ; the outer crowd 
 
 Spoke only in low murmurs, and some climbed 
 
 And clung with legs and arms on perilous coigns, 
 
 Striving to see where that colossal life 
 
 Lay panting — lay a Titan struggling still 
 
 To hold and give the precious hidden fire 
 
 Before the stronger grappled him. Above 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 235 
 
 The young bright morning cast athwart white walls 
 Her shadows blue, and with their clear-cut line, 
 Mildly inexorable as the dial-hand's, 
 Measured the shrinking future of an hour 
 Which held a shrinking hope. And all the while 
 The silent beat of time in each man's soul 
 Made aching pulses. 
 
 But the cry, " She comes ! " 
 Parted the crowd like waters : and she came. 
 Swiftly as once before, inspired with joy, 
 She flashed across the space and made new light, 
 Glowing upon the glow of evening, 
 So swiftly now she came, inspired with woe, 
 Strong with the strength of all her father's pain, 
 Thrilling her as with fire of rage divine 
 And battling energy. She knew — saw all : 
 The stake with Silva bound — her father pierced — 
 To this she had been born : the second time 
 Her father called her to the task of life. 
 
 She knelt beside him. Then he raised himself, 
 
 And on her face there flashed from his the light 
 
 As of a star that waned and flames anew 
 
 In mighty dissolution : 'twas the flame 
 
 Of a surviving trust, in agony. 
 
 He spoke the parting prayer that was command, 
 
 Must sway her will, and reign invisibly. 
 
326 THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 My daughter, you have promised — you will live 
 
 To save our people. In my garments here 
 
 I carry written pledges from the Moor : 
 
 He will keep faith in Spain and Africa. 
 
 Your weakness may be stronger that my strength, 
 
 Winning more love. ... I cannot tell the end. . . 
 
 I held my people's good within my breast. 
 
 Behold, now, I deliver it to you. 
 
 See, it still breathes unstrangled — if it dies, 
 
 Let not your failing will be murderer. . . . Rise, 
 
 And tell our people now I wait in pain . . . 
 
 I cannot die until I hear them say 
 
 They will obey you. 
 
 [Meek, she pressed her lips 
 With slow solemnity upon his brow, 
 Sealing her pledges. Firmly then she rose, 
 And met her people's eyes with kindred gaze, 
 Dark-flashing, fired by effort strenuous 
 Trampling on pain.] 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Zincali all, who hear ! 
 Your Chief is dying : I his daughter live 
 To do his dying will. He asks you now 
 To promise me obedience as your Queen, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 327 
 
 That we may seek the land he won for us, 
 And live the better life for which he toiled. 
 Speak now, and fill my father's dying ear 
 With promise that you will obey him dead, 
 Obeying me his child. 
 
 [Straightway arose 
 A shout of promise, sharpening into cries 
 That seemed to plead despairingly with Death.] 
 
 The Zincali. 
 
 We will obey ! Our Chief shall never die ! 
 We will obey him — will obey our Queen ! 
 
 [The shout unanimous, the concurrent rush 
 Of many voices, quiring shook the air 
 With multitudinous wave : now rose, now fell, 
 Then rose again, the echoes following slow, 
 As if the scattered brethren of the tribe 
 Had caught afar and joined the ready vow. 
 Then some could hold no longer, but must rush 
 To kiss his dying feet, and some to kiss 
 The hem of their Queen's garment. But she raised 
 Her hand to hush them. " Hark ! your Chief may speak 
 Another wish." Quickly she kneeled again, 
 While they upon the ground kept motionless, 
 With head outstretched. They heard his words ; for 
 now, 
 
328 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Grasping at Nadar's arm, he spoke more loud, 
 As one who, having fought and conquered, hurls 
 His strength away with hurling off his shield.] 
 
 Zarca. 
 
 Let loose the Spaniard ! give him back his sword ; 
 He cannot move to any vengeance more — 
 His soul is locked 'twixt two opposing crimes. 
 I charge you let him go unharmed and free 
 Now through your midst. ... 
 
 [With that he sank again — 
 His breast heaved strongly tow'rd sharp sudden falls, 
 And all his life seemed needed for each breath : 
 Yet once he spoke.] 
 
 My daughter, lay your arm 
 Beneath my head . . . so . . . bend and breathe on me. 
 I cannot see you more . . . the Night is come. 
 Be strong . . . remember ... I can only . . . die. 
 
 [His voice went into silence, but his breast 
 
 Heaved long and moaned : its broad strength kept a 
 
 life 
 That heard nought, saw nought, save what once had 
 
 been, 
 And what might be in days and realms afar — 
 Which now in pale procession faded on 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 329 
 
 Toward the thick darkness. And she bent above 
 In sacramental watch to see great Death, 
 Companion of her future, who would wear 
 For ever in her eyes her father's form. 
 
 And yet she knew that hurrying feet had gone 
 
 To do the Chiefs behest, and in her soul 
 
 He who was once its lord was being jarred 
 
 With loosening of cords, that would not loose 
 
 The tightening torture of his anguish. This — 
 
 Oh, she knew it ! — knew it as martyrs knew 
 
 The prongs that tore their flesh, while yet their tongues 
 
 Refused the ease of lies. In moments high 
 
 Space widens in the soul. And so she knelt, 
 
 Clinging with piety and awed resolve 
 
 Beside this altar of her father's life, 
 
 Seeing long travel under solemn suns 
 
 Stretching beyond it ; never turned her eyes, 
 
 Yet felt that Silva passed ; beheld his face 
 
 Pale, vivid, all alone, imploring her 
 
 Across black waters fathomless. 
 
 And he passed. 
 The Gypsies made wide pathway, shrank aloof 
 As those who fear to touch the thing they hate, 
 Lest hate triumphant, mastering all the limbs, 
 Should tear, bite, crush, in spite of hindering will. 
 Slowly he walked, reluctant to be safe 
 And bear dishonoured life which none assailed ; 
 
330 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Walked hesitatingly, all his frame instinct 
 
 With high-born spirit, never used to dread 
 
 Or crouch for smiles, yet stung, yet quivering 
 
 With helpless strength, and in his soul convulsed 
 
 By visions where pale horror held a lamp 
 
 Over wide-reaching crime. Silence hung round : 
 
 It seemed the Plaga hushed itself to hear 
 
 His footsteps and the Chiefs deep dying breath. 
 
 Eyes quickened in the stillness, and the light 
 
 Seemed one clear gaze upon his misery. 
 
 And yet he could not pass her without pause : 
 
 One instant he must pause and look at her ; 
 
 But with that glance at her averted head, 
 
 New-urged by pain he turned away and went, 
 
 Carrying for ever with him what he fled — 
 
 Her murdered love — her love, a dear wronged ghost, 
 
 Facing him, beauteous, 'mid the throngs of hell. 
 
 O fallen and forsaken ! were no hearts 
 Amid that crowd, mindful of what had been ? — 
 Hearts such as wait on beggared royalty, 
 Or silent watch by sinners who despair ? 
 
 Silva had vanished. That dismissed revenge 
 Made larger room for sorrow in fierce hearts ; 
 And sorrow filled them. For the Chief was dead. 
 The mighty breast subsided slow to calm, 
 Slow from the face the ethereal spirit waned, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 33 1 
 
 As wanes the parting glory from the heights, 
 And leaves them in their palid majesty. 
 Fedalma kissed the marble lips, and said, 
 " He breathes no more." And then a long loud wail 
 Poured out upon the morning, made her light 
 Ghastly as smiles on some fair maniac's face 
 Smiling unconscious o'er her bridegroom's corse. 
 The wailing men in eager press closed round, 
 And made a shadowing pall beneath the sun. 
 They lifted reverent the prostrate strength, 
 Sceptred anew by death. Fedalma walked 
 Tearless, erect, following the dead — her cries 
 Deep smothering in her breast, as one who guides 
 Her children through the wilds, and sees and knows 
 Of danger more than they, and feels more pangs, 
 Yet shrinks not, groans not, bearing in her heart 
 Their ignorant misery and their trust in her. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
BOOK V. 
 
 The eastward rocks of Almen'a's bay 
 
 Answer long farewells of the travelling sun 
 
 With softest glow as from an inward pulse 
 
 Changing and flushing : all the Moorish ships 
 
 Seem conscious too, and shoot out sudden shadows ; 
 
 Their black hulls snatch a glory, and their sails 
 
 Show variegated radiance, gently stirred 
 
 Like broad wings poised. Two galleys moored apart 
 
 Show decks as busy as a home of ants 
 
 Storing new forage ; from their sides the boats, 
 
 Slowly pushed off, anon with flashing oar 
 
 Make transit to the quay's smooth-quarried edge, 
 
 Where thronging Gypsies are in haste to lade 
 
 Each as it comes with grandames, babes, and wives, 
 
 Or with dust-tinted goods, the company 
 
 Of wandering years. Nought seems to lie unmoved, 
 
 For 'mid the throng the lights and shadows play, 
 
 And make all surface eager, while the boats 
 
336 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 Sway restless as a horse that heard the shouts 
 And surging hum incessant. Naked limbs 
 With beauteous ease bend, lift, and throw, or raise 
 High signalling hands. The black-haired mother 
 
 steps 
 Athwart the boat's edge, and with opened arms, 
 A wandering Isis outcast from the gods, 
 Leans towards her lifted little one. The boat 
 Full-laden cuts the waves, and dirge-like cries 
 Rise and then fall within it as it moves 
 From high to lower and from bright to dark. 
 Hither and thither, grave white-turbaned Moors 
 Move helpfully, and some bring welcome gifts, 
 Bright stuffs and cutlery, and bags of seed 
 To make new waving crops in Africa. 
 Others aloof with folded arms slow-eyed 
 Survey man's labour, saying, " God is great ; " 
 Or seek with question deep the Gypsies' root, 
 And whether their false faith, being small, will 
 
 prove 
 Less damning than the copious false creeds 
 Of Jews and Christians : Moslem subtlety 
 Found balanced reasons, warranting suspense 
 As to whose hell was deepest — 'twas enough 
 That there was room for all. Thus the sedate. 
 The younger heads were busy with the tale 
 Of that great Chief whose exploits helped the Moor. 
 And, talking still, they shouldered past their friends, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 337 
 
 Following some lure which held their distant gaze 
 
 To eastward of the quay, where yet remained 
 
 A low black tent close guarded all around 
 
 By armed Zincali. Fronting it above, 
 
 Raised by stone steps that sought a jutting strand, 
 
 Fedalma stood and marked with anxious watch 
 
 Each laden boat the remnant lessening 
 
 Of cargo on the shore, or traced the course 
 
 Of Nadar to and fro in hard command 
 
 Of noisy tumult ; imaging oft anew 
 
 How much of labour still deferred the hour 
 
 When they must lift the boat and bear away 
 
 Her father's coffin, and her feet must quit 
 
 This shore for ever. Motionless she stood, 
 
 Black-crowned with wreaths of many-shadowed hair ; 
 
 Black-robed, but bearing wide upon her breast 
 
 Her father's golden necklace and his badge. 
 
 Her limbs were motionless, but in her eyes 
 
 And in her breathing lip's soft tremulous curve 
 
 Was intense motion as of prisoned fire 
 
 Escaping subtly in outleaping thought. 
 
 She watches anxiously, and yet she dreams : 
 The busy moments now expand, now shrink 
 To narrowing swarms within the refluent space 
 Of changeful consciousness. For in her thought 
 Already she has left the fading shore, 
 Sails with her people, seeks an unknown land, 
 
 Y 
 
33^ THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 And bears the burning length of weary days 
 
 That parching fall upon her father's hope, 
 
 Which she must plant and see it wither only — 
 
 Wither and die. She saw the end begun. 
 
 Zincali hearts were not unfaithful : she 
 
 Was centre to the savage loyalty 
 
 Which vowed obedience to Zarca dead. 
 
 But soon their natures missed the constant stress 
 
 Of his command, that, while it fired, restrained 
 
 By urgency supreme, and left no play 
 
 To fickle impulse scattering desire. 
 
 They loved their Queen, trusted in Zarca's child, 
 
 Would bear her o'er the desert on their arms 
 
 And think the weight a gladsome victory ; 
 
 But that great force which knit them into one, 
 
 The invisible passion of her father's soul, 
 
 That wrought them visibly into its will, 
 
 And would have bound their lives with permanence, 
 
 Was gone. Already Hassan and two bands, 
 
 Drawn by fresh baits of gain, had newly sold 
 
 Their service to the Moors, despite her call, 
 
 Known as the echo of her father's will, 
 
 To all the tribe, that they should pass with her 
 
 Straightway to Telemsan. They were not moved 
 
 By worse rebellion than the wilful wish 
 
 To fashion their own service ; they still meant 
 
 To come when it should suit them. But she said, 
 
 This is the cloud no bigger than a hand, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 339 
 
 Sure-threatening. In a little while, the tribe 
 That was to be the ensign of the race, 
 And draw it into conscious union, 
 Itself would break in small and scattered bands 
 That, living on scant prey, would still disperse 
 And propagate forgetfulness. Brief years, 
 And that great purpose fed with vital fire 
 That might have glowed for half a century, 
 Subduing, quickening, shaping, like a sun — 
 Would be a faint tradition, flickering low 
 In dying memories, fringing with dim light 
 The nearer dark. 
 
 Far, far the future stretched 
 Beyond that busy present on the quay, 
 Far her straight path beyond it. Yet she watched 
 To mark the growing hour, and yet in dream 
 Alternate she beheld another track, 
 And felt herself unseen pursuing it 
 Close to a wanderer, who with haggard gaze 
 Looked out on loneliness. The backward years — 
 Oh, she would not forget them — would not drink 
 Of waters that brought rest, while he far off 
 Remembered. " Father, I renounced the joy ; 
 You must forgive the sorrow." 
 
 So she stood, 
 Her struggling life compressed into that hour, 
 Yearning, resolving, conquering ; though she seemed 
 Still as a tutelary image sent 
 
340 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 To guard her people and to be the strength 
 Of some rock-citadel. 
 
 Below her sat 
 Slim mischievous Hinda, happy, red-bedecked 
 With rows of berries, grinning, nodding oft, 
 And shaking high her small dark arm and hand 
 Responsive to the black-maned Ismael, 
 Who held aloft his spoil, and clad in skins 
 Seemed the Boy-prophet of the wilderness 
 Escaped from tasks prophetic. But anon 
 Hinda would backward turn upon her knees, 
 And like a pretty loving hound would bend 
 To fondle her Queen's feet, then lift her head 
 Hoping to feel the gently pressing palm 
 Which touched the deeper sense. Fedalma knew — 
 From out the black robe stretched her speaking hand 
 And shared the girl's content. 
 
 So the dire hours 
 Burthened with destiny — the death of hopes 
 Darkening long generations, or the birth 
 Of thoughts undying — such hours sweep along 
 In their aerial ocean measureless 
 Myriads of little joys, that ripen sweet 
 And soothe the sorrowful spirit of the world, 
 Groaning and travailing with the painful birth 
 Of slow redemption. 
 
 But emerging now 
 From eastward fringing lines of idling men 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 341 
 
 Quick Juan lightly sought the upward steps 
 Behind Fedalma, and two paces off, 
 With head uncovered, said in gentle tones, 
 " Lady Fedalma !" — (Juan's password now 
 Used by no other), and Fedalma turned, 
 Knowing who sought her. He advanced a step, 
 And meeting straight her large calm questioning gaze, 
 Warned her of some grave purport by a face 
 That told of trouble. Lower still he spoke. 
 
 Juan. 
 
 Look from me, lady, towards a moving form 
 
 That quits the crowd and seeks the lonelier strand — 
 
 A tall and grey-clad pilgrim. . . . 
 
 [Solemnly 
 His low tones fell on her, as if she passed 
 Into religious dimness among tombs, 
 And trod on names in everlasting rest. 
 Lingeringly she looked, and then with voice 
 Deep and yet soft, like notes from some long chord 
 Responsive to thrilled air, said — ] 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 It is he ! 
 
 [Juan kept silence for a little space, 
 
 With reverent caution, lest his lighter grief 
 
 Might seem a wanton touch upon her pain. 
 
342 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 But time was urging him with visible flight, 
 Changing the shadows : he must utter all] 
 
 Juan. 
 
 That man was young when last I pressed his hand — 
 
 In that dread moment when he left Bedmar. 
 
 He has aged since : the week has made him grey. 
 
 And yet I knew him — knew the white-streaked hair 
 
 Before I saw his face, as I should know 
 
 The tear-dimmed writing of a friend. See now — 
 
 Does he not linger — pause ? perhaps expect . . . 
 
 [Juan pled timidly : Fedalma's eyes 
 
 Flashed ; and through all her frame there ran the shock 
 
 Of some sharp-wounding joy, like his who hastes 
 
 And dreads to come too late, and comes in time 
 
 To press a loved hand dying. She was mute 
 
 And made no gesture : all her being paused 
 
 In resolution, as some leonine wave 
 
 That makes a moment's silence ere it leaps.] 
 
 Juan. 
 He came from Carthagena, in a boat 
 Too slight for safety ; yon small two-oared boat 
 Below the rock ; the fisher-boy within 
 Awaits his signal. But the pilgrim waits. . . . 
 
 Fedalma. 
 Yes, I will go ! — Father, I owe him this, 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 343 
 
 For loving me made all his misery. 
 
 And we will look once more — will say farewell 
 
 As in a solemn rite to strengthen us 
 
 For our eternal parting. Juan, stay 
 
 Here in my place, to warn me, were there need. 
 
 And, Hinda, follow me ! 
 
 [All men who watched 
 Lost her regretfully, then drew content 
 From thought that she must quickly come again, 
 And filled the time with striving to be near. 
 
 She, down the steps, along the sandy brink 
 
 To where he stood, walked firm ; with quickened 
 
 step 
 The moment when each felt the other saw. 
 He moved at sight of her : their glances met ; 
 It seemed they could no more remain aloof 
 Than nearing waters hurrying into one. 
 Yet their steps slackened and they paused apart, 
 Pressed backward by the force of memories 
 Which reigned supreme as death above desire. 
 Two paces off they stood and silently 
 Looked at each other. Was it well to speak ? 
 Could speech* be clearer, stronger, tell them more 
 Than that long gaze of their renouncing love ? 
 They passed from silence hardly knowing how ; 
 It seemed they heard each other's thought before.] 
 
344 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 I go to be absolved, to have my life 
 
 Washed into fitness for an offering 
 
 To injured Spain. But I have nought to give 
 
 For that last injury to her I loved 
 
 Better than I loved Spain. I am accurst 
 
 Above all sinners, being made the curse 
 
 Of her I sinned for. Pardon ! Penitence ! 
 
 When they have done their utmost, still beyond 
 
 Out of their reach stands Injury unchanged 
 
 And changeless. I should see it still in heaven — 
 
 Out of my reach, for ever in my sight : 
 
 Wearing your grief, 'twould hide the smiling seraphs. 
 
 I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma — ask 
 
 No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul 
 
 For others' bleeding wounds : I am not come 
 
 To say, " Forgive me : " you must not forgive, 
 
 For you must see me ever as I am — 
 
 Your father's . . . 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Speak it not ! Calamity 
 Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes, 
 Till sin is hidden in woe. You — I — we two, 
 Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight, 
 Opened the sluices of that deep. 
 
the spanish gypsy. 345 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 We two ? — 
 Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 No! 
 It shall not be that you did aught alone. 
 For when we loved I willed to reign in you, 
 And I was jealous even of the day 
 If it could gladden you apart from me. 
 And so, it must be that I shared each deed 
 Our love was root of. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Dear ! you share the woe — 
 Nay, the worst dart of vengeance fell on you. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Vengeance ! She does but sweep us with her skirts — 
 
 She takes large space, and lies a baleful light 
 
 Revolving with long years — sees children's children, 
 
 Blights them in their prime. . . . Oh, if two lovers leaned 
 
 To breathe one air and spread a pestilence, 
 
 They would but lie two livid victims dead 
 
 Amid the city of the dying. We 
 
 With our poor petty lives have strangled one 
 
 That ages watch for vainly. 
 
346 the spanish gypsy. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Deep despair 
 Fills all your tones as with slow agony. 
 Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape : 
 Tell me what dread is close before you ? 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 None. 
 No dread, but clear assurance of the end. 
 My father held within his mighty frame 
 A people's life : great futures died with him 
 Never to rise, until the time shall ripe 
 Some other hero with the will to save 
 The lost Zincali. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 Yet your people's shout — 
 I heard it — sounded as the plenteous rush 
 Of full-fecT sources, shaking their wild souls 
 With power that promised sway. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Ah yes, that shout 
 Came from full hearts : they meant obedience. 
 But they are orphaned : their poor childish feet 
 Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray 
 Forgetful after little lures. For me — 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 347 
 
 I am but as the funeral urn that bears 
 The ashes of a leader. 
 
 Don Silva. 
 
 O great God ! 
 What am I but a miserable brand 
 Lit by mysterious wrath ? I lie cast down 
 A blackened branch upon the desolate ground 
 Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink 
 No cup of purest water but will taste 
 Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees 
 
 A light serene and strong on one sole path 
 
 Which she will tread till death. 
 
 He trusted me, and I will keep his trust : 
 
 My life shall be its temple. I will plant 
 
 His sacred hope within the sanctuary 
 
 And die its priestess — though I die alone, 
 
 A hoary woman on the altar step, 
 
 Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good. 
 
 The deepest hunger of a faithful heart 
 
 Is faithfulness. Wish me nought else. And you — 
 
 You too will live. . . . 
 
 Don Silva. 
 I go to Rome, to seek 
 
34$ THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The right to use my knightly sword again ; 
 
 The right to fill my place and live or die 
 
 So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. 
 
 I sate one hour upon the barren rock 
 
 And longed to kill myself; but then I said, 
 
 I will not leave my name in infamy, 
 
 I will not be perpetual rottenness 
 
 Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink 
 
 At last to hell, I will not take my stand 
 
 Among the coward crew who could not bear 
 
 The harm themselves had done, which others bore. 
 
 My young life still may fill a breach, 
 
 And I will take no pardon, not my own, 
 
 Not God's — no pardon idly on my knees ; 
 
 But it shall come to me upon my feet 
 
 And in the thick of action, and each deed 
 
 That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting 
 
 That drives me higher up the steep of honour 
 
 In deeds of duteous service to that Spain 
 
 Who nourished me on her expectant breast, 
 
 The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling 
 
 My earthly being down for carrion 
 
 To fill the air with loathing : I will be 
 
 The living prey of some fierce noble death 
 
 That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud 
 
 I said, " I will redeem my name," and then — 
 
 I know not if aloud : I felt the words 
 
 Drinking up all my senses — " She still lives. 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 349 
 
 I would not quit the dear familiar earth 
 
 Where both of us behold the selfsame sun, 
 
 Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts 
 
 So deep as their communion." Resolute 
 
 I rose and walked. — Fedalma, think of me 
 
 As one who will regain the only life 
 
 Where he is other than apostate — one 
 
 Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows 
 
 Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach 
 
 Outside those vows — the fatal second breach — 
 
 Lies a dark gulf where I have nought to cast, 
 
 Not even expiation — poor pretence, 
 
 Which changes nought but what survives the past, 
 
 And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf 
 
 Divides us. 
 
 Fedalma. 
 
 Yes, for ever. We must walk 
 Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite 
 Is our resolve that we will each be true 
 To high allegiance, higher than our love. 
 Our dear young love — its breath was happiness ! 
 But it had grown upon a larger life 
 Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled — 
 The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed ; 
 For we shall carry each the pressure deep 
 Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore. 
 
350 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The winds to-night will bear me far away. 
 My lord, farewell ! 
 
 He did not say " Farewell." 
 But neither knew that he was silent. She, 
 For one long moment, moved not. They knew nought 
 Save that they parted ; for their mutual gaze 
 As with their soul's full speech forbade their hands 
 To seek each other — those oft-clasping hands 
 Which had a memory of their own, and went 
 Widowed of one dear touch for evermore. 
 At last she turned and with swift movement went, 
 Beckoning to Hinda, who was bending low 
 And lingered still to wash her shells, but soon 
 Leaping and scampering followed, while her Queen 
 Mounted the steps again and took her place, 
 Which Juan rendered silently. 
 
 And now 
 The press upon the quay was thinned ; the ground 
 Was cleared of cumbering heaps, the eager shouts 
 Had sunk, and left a murmur more restrained 
 By common purpose. All the men ashore 
 Were gathering into ordered companies, 
 And with less clamour filled the waiting boats, 
 As if the speaking light commanded them 
 To quiet speed : for now the farewell glow 
 Was on the topmost heights, and where far ships 
 Were southward tending, tranquil, slow, and white 
 
THE SPANISH GYPSY. 35 I 
 
 Upon the luminous meadow toward the verge. 
 The quay was in still shadow, and the boats 
 Went sombrely upon the sombre waves. 
 Fedalma watched again ; but now her gaze 
 Takes in the eastward bay, where that small bark 
 Which held the fisher boy floats weightier 
 With one more life, that rests upon the oar 
 Watching with her. He would not go away 
 Till she was gone ; he would not turn his face 
 Away from her at parting : but the sea 
 Should widen slowly 'twixt their seeking eyes. 
 
 The time was coming. Nadar had approached. 
 
 Was the Queen ready ? Would she follow now 
 
 Her father's body ? For the largest boat 
 
 Was waiting at the quay, the last strong band 
 
 Of armed Zincali ranged themselves in lines 
 
 To guard her passage and to follow her. 
 
 " Yes, I am ready ; " and with action prompt 
 
 They cast aside the Gypsy's wandering tomb, 
 
 And fenced the space from curious Moors who pressed 
 
 To see Chief Zarca's coffin as it lay. 
 
 They raised it slowly, holding it aloft 
 
 On shoulders proud to bear the heavy load. 
 
 Bound on the coffin lay the chieftain's arms, 
 
 His Gypsy garments and his coat of mail. 
 
 Fedalma saw the burthen lifted high, 
 
 And then descending followed. All was still. 
 
352 THE SPANISH GYPSY. 
 
 The Moors aloof could hear the struggling steps 
 Beneath the lowered burthen at the boat — 
 The struggling calls subdued, till safe released 
 It lay within, the space around it filled 
 By black-haired Gypsies. Then Fedalma stepped 
 From off the shore and saw it flee away — 
 The land that bred her helping the resolve 
 Which exiled her for ever. 
 
 It was night 
 Before the ships weighed anchor and gave sail : 
 Fresh Night emergent in her clearness, lit 
 By the large crescent moon, with Hesperus, 
 And those great stars that lead the eager host. 
 Fedalma stood and watched the little bark 
 Lying jet-black upon moon- whitened waves. 
 Silva was standing too. He too divined 
 A steadfast form that held him with its thought, 
 And eyes that sought him vanishing : he saw 
 The waters widen slowly, till at last 
 Straining he gazed and knew not if he gazed 
 On aught but blackness overhung by stars. 
 
NOTES 
 
NOTES. 
 
 P. 50. Cactus. 
 
 The Indian fig (Opuntia), like the other Cactacece, is 
 believed to have been introduced into Europe from South 
 America ; but every one who has been in the south of Spain 
 will understand why the anachronism has been chosen. 
 
 P. 183. Marranos. 
 
 The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of 
 their race converted to Christianity at the end of the four- 
 teenth century and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty 
 derivation from Maran-atha, the Lord cometh, seems 
 hardly called for, seeing that marrano is Spanish for pig. 
 The " old Christians " learned to use the word as a term of 
 contempt for the " new Christians," or converted Jews and 
 their descendants; but' not too monotonously, for they 
 often interchanged it for the fine old crusted opprobrium 
 of the name Jew. Still, many Marranos held the highest 
 
356 NOTES. 
 
 secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were re- 
 spected accordingly. 
 
 P. 206. Celestial baron. 
 
 The Spaniards conceived their patron Santiago (St James), 
 the great captain of their armies, as a knight and baron : to 
 them, the incongruity would have lain in conceiving him 
 simply as a Galilean fisherman. And their legend was 
 adopted with respect by devout mediaeval minds generally. 
 Dante, in an elevated passage of the Paradiso — the mem- 
 orable opening of Canto xxv. — chooses to introduce the 
 Apostle James as il bar one. 
 
 " Indi si mosse un lume verso noi 
 Di quella schiera, ond 'usci la primizia 
 Che lascib Cristo de' vicari suoi. 
 E la mia Donna piena de letizia 
 Mi disse : Mira, mira, ecco '1 barone 
 Per cui laggili si visita Galizia." 
 
 P. 208. The Seven Parts. 
 
 Las Siete Partidas (The Seven Parts) is the title given to 
 the code of laws compiled under Alfonso the Tenth, who 
 reigned in the latter half of the thirteenth century — 1252- 
 1284. The passage in the text is translated from Partida 
 //., Ley IL. The whole preamble is worth citing in its old 
 Spanish : — 
 
 " Co mo dcben ser escogidos los caballeros." 
 " Antiguamiente para facer caballeros escogien de los 
 
NOTES. 357 
 
 venadores de monte, que son homes que sufren grande 
 laceria, et carpinteros, et ferreros, et pedreros, porque usan 
 mucho a ferir et son fuerte de manos ; et otrosi de los car- 
 niceros, por razon que usan matar las cosas vivas et esparcer 
 la sangre dellas : et aun cataban otra cosa en escogiendolos 
 que fuesen bien faccionadas de membros para ser recios, et 
 fuertes et ligeros. Et esta manera de escoger usaron los 
 antiguos muy grant tiempo; mas porque despues vieron 
 muchas vegadas que estos atales non habiendo vergiienza 
 olvidaban todas estas cosas sobredichas, et en logar de 
 vincer sus enemigos venciense ellos, to vieron por bien los 
 sabidores destas cosas que catasen homes para esto que 
 hobiesen naturalmiente en sf vergiienza. Et sobresto dixo 
 un sabio que habie nombre Vegecio que fablo de la drden 
 de caballen'a, que la vergiienza vieda al caballero que non 
 fuya de la batalla, et por ende ella le face ser vencedor ; ca 
 mucho tovieron que era mejor el homo flaco et sofridor, que 
 el fuerte et ligero para foir. Et por esto sobre todas las 
 otras cosas cataron que fuesen homes porque se guardasen 
 de facer cosa por que podiesen caer en vergiienza : et 
 porque estos fueron escogidos de buenos logares et algo, 
 que quiere tanto decir en lenguage de Espana como bien, 
 por eso los llamaron fijosdalgo, que muestra atanto como 
 fijos de bien. Et en algunos otros logares los llamaron 
 gentiles, et tomaron este nombre de gentileza que muestra 
 atanto como nobleza de bondat, porque los gentiles fueron 
 nobles homes et buenos, et vevieron mas ordenadamente 
 que las otras gentes. Et esta gentileza aviene en tres man- 
 eras ; la una por linage, la segunda por saber, et la tercera 
 por bondat de armas et de costumbres et de maneras. Et 
 comoquier que estos que la ganan por su sabidoria d por su 
 
358 NOTES. 
 
 bondat, son con derecho llamados nobles et gentiles, may- 
 ormiente lo son aquellos que la han por linage antiguamiente, 
 et facen buena vida porque les viene de lueiie como por 
 heredat : et por ende son mas encargados de facer bien et 
 guardarse de yerro et de malestanza ; ca non tan solamiente 
 quando lo facen resciben dafio et vergiienza ellos mismos, ma 
 aun aquellos onde ellos vienen." 
 
 THE END. 
 
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