THE PRINCE AND THE PALM TREE.
Abderahman, the first king of Moorish Spain, is said to have been the
first who transplanted the palm from the East into Spain. He is represented
as frequently addressing it with great feeling, connecting it with
recollections of his native land, whence he had been driven by the usurper
of his rightful throne.
Beautiful palm! though strange and rude
The gales that breathe around thee here,
Though in ungenial solitude
There bloom no kindred foliage near—
Yet lovely tree, no foreign hand
Shall rear thee in the stranger’s land.
My fellow exile!—dost thou sigh
For thy lost native soil again—
For the warm rays of Syria’s sky,
Her bowers of fragrance, or the plain
Where thy broad leaves once joyed to lave
Their verdure in the southern wave?
Across the sunlight hours of glee
Do memories of sadness come,
That speak of groves beyond the sea,
That whisper of a glorious home?
Dost thou partake my grief, when here
I bathe thy stem with many a tear?
Ah no! thou drink’st the beams of day
As if thy country’s air they blest;
As proudly do thy branches play,
Fanned by the breezes of the west.
The glad earth yields a soil as light—
The heaven above thee shines as bright.
But I, a pilgrim desolate,
Must mourn unheeded and alone;
Thou sharest with me the exile’s fate—
The exile’s sorrow is mine own!
Still glorious in thy reckless pride
Wave thou—while I weep by thy side!