On a background of pale gold
I would trace with quaint design,
Penciled fine,
Brilliant-colored, Moorish scenes,
Mosques and crescents, pages, queens,
Line on line,
That the prose-world of to-day
Might the gorgeous Past's array
Once behold.

On the magic painted shield
Rich Granada's Vega green
Should be seen;
Crystal fountains, coolness flinging,
Hanging gardens' skyward springing
Emerald sheen;
Ruddy when the daylight falls,
Crowned Alhambra's beetling walls
Stand revealed;

Balconies that overbrow
Field and city, vale and stream.
In a dream
Lulled the drowsy landscape basks;
Weary toilers cease their tasks.
Mark the gleam
Silvery of each white-swathed peak!
Mountain-airs caress the cheek,
Fresh from snow.

Here in Lindaraxa's bower
The immortal roses bloom;
In the room
Lion-guarded, marble-paven,
Still the fountain leaps to heaven.
But the doom
Of the banned and stricken race
Overshadows every place,
Every hour.

Where fair Lindaraxa dwelt
Flits the bat on velvet wings;
Mute the strings
Of the broken mandoline;
The Pavilion of the Queen
Widely flings
Vacant windows to the night;
Moonbeams kiss the floor with light
Where she knelt.

Through these halls that people stepped
Who through darkling centuries
Held the keys
Of all wisdom, truth, and art,
In a Paradise apart,
Lapped in ease,
Sagely pondering deathless themes,
While, befooled with monkish dreams,
Europe slept.

Where shall they be found to-day?
Yonder hill that frets the sky
"The Last Sigh
Of the Moor" is namèd still.
There the ill-starred Boabdil
Bade good-by
To Granada and to Spain,
Where the Crescent ne'er again
Holdeth sway.

Vanished like the wind that blows,
Whither shall we seek their trace
On earth's face?
The gigantic wheel of fate,
Crushing all things soon or late,
Now a race,
Now a single life o'erruns,
Now a universe of suns,
Now a rose.

The gardener's cat's called Mignonette, 
She hates the cold, she hates the wet, 
She sits among the hothouse flowers 
And sleeps for hours and hours and hours. 

She dreams she is a tiger fierce 
With great majestic claws that pierce. 
She sits by the hot-water pipes 
And dreams about a coat of stripes; 

And in her slumbers she will go 
And stalk the sullen buffalo, 
And when he roars across the brake 
She does not wink, she does not wake. 

It must be perfectly immense 
To dream with such magnificence. 
And pass the most inclement day 
In this indeed stupendous way. 

She dreams of India's sunny clime, 
And only wakes at dinner-time, 
And even then she does not stir 
But waits till milk is brought to her. 

How nice to be the gardener's cat. 
She troubles not for mouse or rat, 
But, when it's coming down in streams, 
She sits among the flowers and dreams. 

The gardener's cat would be the thing, 
Her dreams are so encouraging; 
She dreams that she's a tiger, yet 
She's just a cat called Mignonette!

The moral's this, my little man — 
Sleep 'neath life's hailstones when you can, 
And if you're humble in estate, 
Dream splendidly, at any rate!