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Sacred unto poetry
Is the mystic past,
Hence the fairy shadows
Round the present cast.
Old songs lend their lovely wings
To a thousand lovely things.
And how many haunting songs
Still the charmed reign prolongs
Of the Moslem rule in Spain.
Honoured be each story
Brought from other days,
But for them there were no flowers
On our world-worn ways.
Every land, and every heart,
Turn back to their earlier part.
Let old songs and stories live
While the fanciful they give
To the Moslem rule in Spain.
L. E. L.
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