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the Residencia de Estudiantes, has published his complete works up to date.
The following translations are necessarily inadequate, as the poems depend very much on modulations of rhythm and on the expressive fitting together of words impossible to render in a foreign language. He uses rhyme comparatively little, often substituting assonance in accordance with the pecular tradition of Spanish prosody. I have made no attempt to imitate his form exactly.
Madrid
I
Yes, come away with me—fields of Soria,
quiet evenings, violet mountains,
aspens of the river, green dreams
of the grey earth,
bitter melancholy
of the crumbling city—
perhaps it is that you have become
the background of my life.
Men of the high Numantine plain,
who keep God like old—Christians,
may the sun of Spain fill you
with joy and light and abundance!
II
A frail sound of a tunic trailing
across the infertile earth,
and the sonorous weeping
of the old bells.