l I'd weep.
By day and night without delight a lonely watch I keep.
By Allah, I beseech thee, if thou art true to me,
That when the Moorish ladies turn round and gaze on thee,
Thou wilt not glance again at them nor meet their smiling eye,
Or else, my Abenamar, I shall lay me down and die.
For thou art gallant, fair, and good; oh, soothe my heart's alarms,
And be as tender in thy love as thou art brave in arms.
And as they yield to thee the prize for valor in the field
Oh, show that thou wilt pity to thy loving lady yield."
Then Abenamar, with a smile, a kiss of passion gave.
"If it be needful," he replied, "to give the pledge you crave
To tell thee, Adelifa, that thou art my soul's delight
And lay my inmost bosom bare before thy anxious sight,
The bosom on whose mirror shines thy face in lines of light,
Here let me ope the secret cell that thou thyself may see,
The altar and the blazing lamp that always burn for thee.
And if perchance thou art not thus released from torturing care,
Oh, see the faith, the blameless love that wait upon thee there.
And if thou dost imagine I am a perjured knight,
I pray that Allah on my head may call down bane and blight,
And when into the battle with the Christian I go
I pray that I may perish by the lances of the foe;
And when I don my armor for the toils of the campaign,
That I may never wear the palm of victory again,
But as a captive, on a shore far from Granada, pine,
While the freedom that I long to have may never more be mine.
Yes, may my foes torment me in that sad hour of need;
My very friends, for their own ends, prove worthless as a reed.
My kin deny, my fortune fly, and, on my dying day,
My very hopes of Paradise in darkness pass away.
Or if I live in freedom to see my love once more,
May I meet the fate which most I hate, and at my palace door
Find that some caitiff lover has won thee for his own,
And turn to die, of mad despair, distracted and alone.
Wherefore, my life, my darling wife, let all thy pain be cured;
Thy trust in my fidelity be from this hour assured.
No more those pearly tears of thine fall useless in the dust
No more the jealous fear distract thy bosom with mistrust.
Believe me by the oath I swear my heart I here resign,
And all I have of love and care are, Adelifa, thine.
Believe that Abenamar would his own life betray
If he had courage thus to throw life's choicest gem a