  Deep learned are the poor in many ways, Their hearts are mellowed by sweet human pain, And she has learned the lesson of the waifs, This sadly-ravaged, stern, soul-moving Spain! Rugged and wild, wind-swept, and bleak, and drear, She has a ruined splendor all her own, It seizes even while you ask in fear The reason man should choose this waste for home. Her cities rise, ascetic, lofty, proud, Forever haunted by high souls that dare, And from her wondrous churches rings aloud A heaven-storming radiance of prayer; With psalm, with dance, with ecstasy's white thrill, Her mystics dared to lose themselves in God, Theirs was unflinching faith, fierce, varonil, A force as true to nature as the sod. Reward must come: perhaps from her to-day May spring the needed saint, to think, to feel, To grope triumphantly, to point the way To altars where both Faith and Science kneel. Upon her ashy mountain height she stands, Eager to step into the forward strife, Her eyes are wide with hope, outstretched her hands To meet the promise of new coursing life: Steadfast her cities to the desert face, Snow mountains loom across the silent plain: Take courage, O exalted tragic race! Courage! Christ's always faithful grand old Spain! Castile, 1908. |
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