TOLEDO
LAST FRAGMENT

No more the jousts and tourneys,
No more the Moorish songs,
No more dark battlements with throngs
Of hidden Moslem blades;
Today without their lattices,
Their terraces and glades,
No dance, no fair sultana
Glads with the old pavana
Her Sultan's garden shades.

No more the golden chambers
In the palaces of kings;
Nor hidden halls of pleasurings
Of Orient devise;
Nor are there dark-eyed women
On the velvet couches lain,
Where the Faithful may obtain
Their hint of Paradise.

No more the eastern songbirds
In their cages made of gold
Fill the air as once of old
With the color of their songs;
While within his bath reclining,
Half-asleep, with odors shining,
Dreams of love their lord enfold.

No more an age of pleasure
Like the Moorish days gone by;
Age no rival can supply,
Two alike could hardly be;
But beneath the Gothic spire
Of the Christian temple hangs
A great bell whose mighty clangs
Speak of God in verity.

There's today a temple standing
On its hundred Gothic piles;
Crosses, altars in its aisles,
And a creed of holiness;
There's a people bending low,
Lifting unto God its prayer
In the light that's burning there
For the faith their hearts confess!

There's a God the winds have heard
Mid the foldings of the blast;
The earth trembles at His word,
And the future mocks the past.

The mere cipher of His name
On the sinful hearts of men,
Was adored of old the same
Through the Arab darkness then.