rattling screams
quenched among the crackling flames?
The crowd, the pile of faggots in the square,
the yellow robes.... Is it that
bells of Castile that you remember?

_Toledo--Madrid_

X

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez.
The speeding dark-green water mirrors the old red walls
and the balustrades and close-barred windows of the palace;
and on the other bank three stooping washerwomen
whose bright red shawls and piles of linen gleam in the green,
the swirling green where shimmer the walls of Aranjuez.

There's smoke in the gardens of Aranjuez
smoke of the burning of the years' dead leaves;
the damp paths rustle underfoot
thick with the crisp broad leaves of the planes.

The tang of the smoke and the reek of the box
and the savor of the year's decay
are soft in the gardens of Aranjuez
where the fountains fill silently with leaves
and the moss grows over the statues and busts
clothing the simpering cupids and fauns
whose stone eyes search the empty paths
for the rustling rich brocaded gowns
and the neat silk calves of the halcyon past.

The Tagus flows with a noise of wiers through Aranjuez.
And slipping by mirrors the brown-silver trunks
of the planes and the hedges
of box and spires of cypress and alleys of yellowing elms;
and on the other bank three grey mules pulling a cart
loaded with turnips, driven by a man in a blue woolen sash
who strides along whistling and does not look towards Aranjuez.

XI

Beyond ruffled velvet hills
the sky burns yellow like a candle-flame.

Sudden a village
roofs against the sky
leaping buttresses
a church
and a tower utter dark like the heart
of a candleflame.

Swing the bronze-bells
uncoiling harsh slow sound through the dusk
that growls out in the conversational clatter
Of the trainwheels and the rails.

A hill humps unexpectedly to hide
the tower erect like a pistil
in the depths of the tremendous flaming
flower of the west.

_Getafe_

XII

Genteel noise of Paris hats
and beards that tilt this way and that.
Mirrors create on either side
infinities of chandeliers.

The orchestra is tuning up:
Twanging of the string