So fair as mine in Spain:
It stands embowered in green,
Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by the Xenil's shore,
And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
The storied Vega plain,
And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
And I toil through years of pain
Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet
Sometimes its courts I greet:
Sometimes in joy its shining halls
I tread with favored feet;
But never my eyes in the light of day
Were blest with its ivied walls,
Where the marble white and the granite gray
Turn gold alike when the sunbeams play,
When the soft day dimly falls.

I know in its dusky rooms
Are treasures rich and rare;
The spoil of Eastern looms,
And whatever of bright and fair
Painters divine have caught and won
From the vault of Italy's air:
White gods in Phidian stone
People the haunted glooms;
And the song of immortal singers
Like a fragrant memory lingers,