Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/263

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TRANSLATION.
243

Of these poetical sublimities, a translation at once literal and metrical, would we think, damp the spirit of a Coleridge.

1.


Lining of my life!
How are you? how do you do?
How have you passed the night?
Have you met with nothing new?


2.


Lining of my life!
To you I should like to sing;
But that my eyes are weak,
And tears might begin to spring.


3.


From Guadalajara fighting,
With a soldier I came on,
My well-lined sweet-syrup!
I came to see you alone.


4.


And come then with me.
And I will give thee
Such fine shoes of satin.
The color of tea.

It is coffee, but you will excuse the poetical license. The music married to this "immortal verse," I have learned by ear, and shall send you. In the "enanos" (the dwarfs) the dancer makes himself little, every time the chorus is sung.

1.


Ah! que bonitos
Son los enanos
Los chiquititos
Y Mejicanos.