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Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Segovia and Madrid

By Rose Terry Cooke (1827–1892)

IT sings to me in sunshine,

It whispers all day long,

My heart-ache like an echo

Repeats the wistful song:

Only a quaint old love-lilt,

Wherein my life is hid,—

“My body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid!”

I dream, and wake, and wonder,

For dream and day are one,

Alight with vanished faces,

And days forever done.

They smile and shine around me

As long ago they did;

For my body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid!

Through inland hills and forests

I hear the ocean breeze,

The creak of straining cordage,

The rush of mighty seas,

The lift of angry billows

Through which a swift keel slid;

For my body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid.

Oh fair-haired little darlings

Who bore my heart away!

A wide and woful ocean

Between us rolls to-day;

Yet am I close beside you

Though time and space forbid;

My body is in Segovia,

But my soul is in Madrid.

If I were once in heaven,

There would be no more sea;

My heart would cease to wander,

My sorrows cease to be;

My sad eyes sleep forever,

In dust and daisies hid,

And my body leave Segovia.

—Would my soul forget Madrid?