Part 10 (1/2)

Cold Soria, clear Soria, key of the outlands, with the warrior castle in ruins beside the Duero, and the stiff old walls, and the blackened houses.

Dead city of barons and soldiers and huntsmen, whose portals bear the s.h.i.+elds of a hundred hidalgos; city of hungry greyhounds, of lean greyhounds that swarm among the dirty lanes and howl at midnight when the crows caw.

Cold Soria! The clock of the Lawcourts has struck one.

Soria, city of Castile, so beautiful under the moon.

IX

AT A FRIEND'S BURIAL

They put him away in the earth a horrible July afternoon under a sun of fire.

A step from the open grave grew roses with rotting petals among geraniums of bitter fragrance, red-flowered. The sky a pale blue. A wind hard and dry.

Hanging on the thick ropes, the two gravediggers let the coffin heavily down into the grave.

It struck the bottom with a sharp sound, solemnly, in the silence.

The sound of a coffin striking the earth is something unutterably solemn.

The heavy clods broke into dust over the black coffin.

A white mist of dust rose in the air out of the deep grave.

And you, without a shadow now, sleep.

Long peace to your bones.

For all time you sleep a tranquil and a real sleep.

X

THE IBERIAN G.o.d

Like the cross-bowman, the gambler in the song, the Iberian had an arrow for his G.o.d when he shattered the grain with hail and ruined the fruits of autumn; and a gloria when he fattened the barley and the oats that were to make bread to-morrow.

”G.o.d of ruin, I wors.h.i.+p because I wait and because I fear.

I bend in prayer to the earth a blasphemous heart.

”Lord, through whom I s.n.a.t.c.h my bread with pain, I know your strength, I know my slavery.

Lord of the clouds in the east that trample the country-side, of dry autumns and late frosts and of the blasts of heat that scorch the harvests!

”Lord of the iris in the green meadows where the sheep graze, Lord of the fruit the worms gnaw and of the hut the whirlwind shatters, your breath gives life to the fire in the hearth, your warmth ripens the tawny grain, and your holy hand, St. John's eve, hardens the stone of the green olive.

”Lord of riches and poverty, Of fortune and mishap, who gives to the rich luck and idleness, and pain and hope to the poor!

”Lord, Lord, in the inconstant wheel of the year I have sown my sowing that has an equal chance with the coins of a gambler sown on the gambling-table!