Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich / [by Thomas Bailey Aldrich] [electronic text]

PEPITA.

SCARCELY sixteen years old Is Pepita! (You understand, A breath of this sunny land Turns green fruit into gold:

A maiden's conscious blood In the cheek of girlhood glows; A bud slips into a rose Before it is quite a bud!)

And I in Seville—sedate, An American, with an eye For that strip of indigo sky Half-glimpsed through a Moorish gate—

I see her, sitting up there, With tortoise-shell comb and fan; Red-lipped, but a trifle wan, Because of her coal-black hair;

And the hair a trifle dull, Because of the eyes beneath, And the radiance of her teeth When her smile is at its full!

Against the balcony rail She leans, and looks on the street; Her lashes, long and discreet, Shading her eyes like a veil.

Held by a silver dart, The mantilla's delicate lace Falls each side of her face And crosswise over her heart.

This is Pepita—this Her hour for taking her ease: A lover under the trees In the calle were not amiss!

Well, I must needs pass by, With a furtive glance, be it said, At the dusk Murillo head And the Andalusian eye!

In the Plaza I hear the sounds Of guitar and castanet; Although it is early yet, The dancers are on their rounds.

Softly the sunlight fallsOn the slim Giralda tower, That now peals forth the hour O'er broken ramparts and walls.

Ah, what glory and gloom In this Arab-Spanish town! What masonry, golden-brown, And hung with tendril and bloom!

Place of forgotten kings!— With fountains that never play, And gardens where day by day The lonely cicada sings!

Traces are everywhere Of the dusky race that came, And passed, like a sudden flame, Leaving their sighs in the air!

Taken with things like these, Pepita fades out of my mind: Pleasure enough I find In Moorish column and frieze.

And yet I have my fears, If this had been long ago, I might... well, I do not know... She with her sixteen years!