Bright Sun, I sigh’d, no light can gleam
Beside true love and shine supreme!
Fair Spain, no realm so fair may be;
But love recall’d unsexes thee.
Nay, no land shows one sunlit scene
That rose-like bursts from earth’s wide green,
But brings an image swept away
When eyelids close at close of day.
’Tis but the impress mind receives,
That, sunn’d or sombre, never leaves.
Ah, if the past must always cope
With future joys for which we hope,
How vain the aims that make their quest
A life that merely shall be blest,
And slight earth’s meed of lowly sweets
For purple heights and golden streets!
Faith fails that merely waits below.
Dreams after death would bring but woe
Without remember’d love that blest
The soul before it found its rest.