142 THE SIESTA. Gently sweeping the grassy ground, While my lady sleeps in the shade below FROM THE SPANISH OF PEDRO DE CASTRO Y ANAYA. STAY, rivulet, nor haste to leave The lovely vale that lies around thee. Why wouldst thou be a sea at eve, When but a fount the morning found thee? Born when the skies began to glow, Humblest of all the rock's cold daughters, No blossom bowed its stalk to show Now on thy stream the noonbeams look, Its crystal from the clearest brook, Its rushing current from the swiftest. Ah! what wild haste!-and all to be To that vast grave with quicker motion. 144 FROM THE SPANISH. Far better 'twere to linger still In this green vale, these flowers to cherish, And die in peace, an aged rill, Than thus, a youthful Danube, perish. THE COUNT OF GREIERS. (FROM THE GERMAN.) AT morn the Count of Greiers before his castle stands ; "Oh, greenest of the valleys, how shall I come to thee! He hears a sound of timbrels, and suddenly appear The youngest of the maidens, slim as a spray of spring, ring; They fling upon his forehead a crown of mountain flowers, "And ho, young Count of Greiers! this morning thou art ours!" 146 THE COUNT OF GREIERS. Then hand in hand departing, with dance and roundelay, Through hamlet after hamlet, they lead the Count away. They dance through wood and meadow, they dance across the linn, Till the mighty Alpine summits have shut the music in. The second morn is risen, and now the third is come; Where stays the Count of Greiers? has he forgot his home? Again the evening closes, in thick and sultry air, There's thunder on the mountains, the storm is gathering there. The cloud has shed its waters, the brook comes swollen down ; You see it by the lightning-a river wide and brown. "Here am I cast by tempests far from your mountain dell. "Farewell, with thy glad dwellers, green vale among the rocks! Farewell the swift sweet moments, in which I watched thy flocks! Why rocked they not my cradle in that delicious spot, That garden of the happy, where heaven endures me not? |