The Publishers of this volume, desiring to print it in an improved form,
have asked me to write something by way of preface or supplement to the
new edition. After some deliberation I have found myself unable to comply
with this request. These pages were written in the first half of the year
1870, a time of intense interest and importance, to Spain. I left Madrid
in the memorable August of that year, passing through Paris when that
beautiful city was lying in the torpor which followed the wild excitement
of the declaration of war, and preceded the fury of despair that came with
the catastrophe of Sedan. I then intended to return to Spain before long;
and, in fact, few years have passed since that time in which I have not
nourished the dream of revisiting the Peninsula and its scenes of magic
and romance. But many cares and duties have intervened; I have never gone
back to Spain, and I have arrived at an age when I begin to doubt if I
have any castles there requiring my attention.
I have therefore nothing to add to this little book. Reading it again
after the lapse of many years, I find much that might be advantageously
modified or omitted. But as its merits, if it have any, are merely those
of youth, so also are its faults, and they are immanent and structural;
they cannot be amended without tearing the book to pieces. For this reason
I have confined myself to the correction of the most obvious and flagrant
errors, and can only hope the kindly reader will pass over with an
indulgent smile the rapid judgments, the hot prejudices, the pitiless
condemnations, the lyric eulogies, born of an honest enthusiasm and
unchecked by the reserve which comes of age and experience. I venture to
hope, though with some anxiety and uncertainty, that the honest enthusiasm
may itself be recognized, as well as the candor which the writer tried to
preserve in speaking of things which powerfully appealed to his loves and
his hates.
I therefore commit this book to the public once more with its
imperfections on its head; with its prophecies unfulfilled, its hopes
baffled, its observations in many instances rendered obsolete by the swift
progress of events. A changed Europe--far different from that which I
traversed twenty years ago--suffers in a new fever-dream of war and
revolution north of the Pyrenees; and beyond those picturesque mountains
the Spanish monarchy enjoys a new lease of life by favor of circumstances
which demand a chronicler of more leisure than myself. I must leave what I
wrote in the midst of the stirring scenes of the interregnum between the
secular monarchy and the short-lived Republic--whose advent I foresaw, but
whose sudden fall was veiled from my sanguine vision--without defense or
apology, claiming only that it was written in good faith, from a heart
filled with passionate convictions and an ardent love and devotion to what
is best in Spain. I recorded what I saw, and my eyes were better then than
now. I trust I have not too often spoken amiss of a people whose art,
whose literature, whose language, and whose character compelled my highest
admiration, and with whom I enjoyed friendships which are among the
dearest recollections of my life.
John Hay.
Lafayette Square, Washington,
_April_, 1890.
Contents.
The Pike County Ballads.
Jim Bludso
Little Breeches
Banty Tim
The Mystery of Gilgal
Golyer
The Pledge at Spunky Point
Wanderlieder.
Sunrise in the Place de la Concorde
The Sphinx of the Tuileries
The Surrender of Spain
The Prayer of The Romans
The Curse of Hungary
The Monks of Basle
The Enchanted Shirt
A Woman's Love
On Pitz Languard
Boudoir Prophecies
A Triumph of Order
Ernst of Edelsheim
My Castle in Spain
Sister Saint Luke
New And Old.
Miles Keogh's Horse
The Advance Guard
Love's Prayer
Christine
Expectation
To Flora
A Haunted Room
Dreams
The Light of Love
Quand-Même
Words
The Stirrup Cup
A Dream of Bric-a-Brac
Liberty
The White Flag
The Law of Death
Mount Tabor
Religion and Doctrine
Sinai and Calvary
The Vision of St. Peter
Israel
Crows at Washington
Remorse
Esse Quam Vlderi
When the Boys Come Home
Lèse-Amour
Northward
In the Firelight
In a Graveyard
The Prairie
Centennial
A Winter Night
Student-Song
How It Happened
God's Vengeance
Too Late
Love's Doubt
Lagrimas
On the Bluff
Una
"Through the Long Days and Years"
A Phylactery
Blondine
Distichs
Regardant
Guy of the Temple
Translations.
The Way to Heaven
After Heine: Countess Jutta
The Pike County Ballads.
Jim Bludso, of the Prairie Belle.
Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Becase he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?
He weren't no saint,--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,--
I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had,--
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire,--
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she _would n't_ be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night--
The oldest craft on the line--
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
The fire bust out as she clared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin' and cursin', but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore."
Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,--
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren't no saint,--but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shook hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,--
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't a going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.