A mule, the snowball of a beast!
(Ring out the duros, test the tune)
And a guitar, the midnight lark,
That rises silvering the dark
An hour before the rosy-fleeced
Arrival of the Moon.
The gypsies quarried from the gloom,
For their carouse, a silver hall:
And jingled harness filled the lands
With gay pesetas changing hands,
So silvery, there seemed no room
For any moon at all.
Two figtrees on a whitewashed wall
Were playing chess; a lamp was queen:
Beneath the civil guard were seen
With tricorned hats—a game of cards:
One bottle was between them all,
Good health, and kind regards.
A stable with an open door
And in the yard a dying hound:
Out on the dunes a broken spoor
Converging into twenty more—
When torches had been flashed around
Was all they could restore.
A wind that blows from other countries
Shook opals from the vernal palms
Birdshot of the silver huntress
By which the nightingale was slain:
With stitch of fire the distant farms
Were threaded by the train.
One rider, then, and all alone—
The long Castilian Veld before:
To show the way his shadow straight
Went on ahead and would not wait,
But seemed, so infinitely grown,
Equator to the moor.
Till with a faint adoring thunder,
Their lances raised to Christ the King,
Through all the leagues he had to go—
An army chanting smooth and low,
Across the long mirage of wonder
He heard the steeples sing.
And as, far off, the breaking morn
Had hit the high seraphic town,
He prayed for lonesome carbineers
And wakeful lovers, rash of years,
Who’ve harvested the lunar corn
Before the crops were brown.
For thieves: the gate-man late and lonely
With his green flag; for tramps that sprawl:
And lastly for a frozen guy
That towed six mules along the sky
And felt among them all the only,
Or most a mule of all!