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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Dirge on Guillen Peraza

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Oceanica: Vol. XXXI. 1876–79.

Various Islands: Canary Islands

Dirge on Guillen Peraza

By From the Spanish

Governor of the Canaries, Who Fell in Attempting the Conquest of the Island Palma, Soon after the Year 1814

Translated by John Leyden

PERAZA, virgins fair and chaste

Wail, as you wish for heaven to smile!

That flower of youth has faded fast,

That lovely flower, too fair to last,

Lies withered in wild Palma’s Isle.

The Palm no more shalt thou be styled,

Thou scene of dire disgrace and shame!

Thy name shall be the Bramble wild,

The Cypress sad by death defiled,

That sunk so dear a chieftain’s fame!

May dire volcanoes waste thy plains,

Pleasures desert thy guilty land,

Be haunted still by woes and pains,

And still, for spring’s reviving rains,

Thy flowery fields o’erwhelmed with sand!

Peraza! where is now thy shield?

Peraza! where is now thy spear?

No more his lance the chief shall wield,

His broken weapons strew the field:

Alas, for victory bought so dear!