HISPANIA! O, Hispania! once my home — <br />How hath thy fall degraded every son <br />Who owns thee for a birth-place. They who walk <br />Thy marbled courts and holy sanctuaries, <br />Or tread thy olive groves, and pluck the grapes <br />That cluster there — or dance the saraband <br />By moonlight, to some Moorish melody — <br />Or whistle with the Muleteer, along <br />Thy goat-climbed rocks and awful precipices; <br />How do the nations scorn them and deride! <br />And they who wander where a Spanish tongue <br />Was never heard, and where a Spanish heart <br />Had never beat before, how poor, how shunned, <br />Avoided, undervalued, and debased, <br />Move they among the foreign multitudes! <br />Once I was bright to the world's eye, and passed <br />Among the nobles of my native land <br />In Spain's armorial bearings, decked and stampt <br />With Royalty's insignia, and I claimed <br />And took the station of my high descent; <br />But the cold world has cut a cantle out <br />From my escutcheon— and now here I am, <br />A poor, depreciated pistareen.<br /><br />John Gardiner Calkins Brainard<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/256-es-alienum/
