C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Madison Cawein (1865–1914)
Carmen
L
In Andalusian afternoons,
With ogling eye and compliment
Smiled on you, as along you went
Some sleepy street of old Seville—
Twirled with military skill
Mustaches; buttoned uniforms
Of Spanish yellow bowed your charms.
Whence your mantilla, half thrown back,
Discovered shoulders and bold breast
Bohemian brown! And you were dressed
In some short skirt of gipsy red
Of smuggled stuff; thence stockings dead
White silk, exposed with many a hole,
Through which your plump legs roguish stole
A fleshly look; and tiny toes
In red morocco shoes with bows
Of scarlet ribbons. Daintily
You walked by me, and I did see
Your oblique eyes, your sensuous lip,
That gnawed the rose you once did flip
At bashful José’s nose, while loud
Laughed the gaunt guards among the crowd.
And in your brazen chemise thrust,
Heaved with the swelling of your bust,
The bunch of white acacia blooms
Whiffed past my nostrils hot perfumes.
As in a cool neveria
I ate an ice with Mérimée,
Dark Carmencita, you passed gay,
All holiday-bedizenèd,
A new mantilla on your head;
A crimson dress bespangled fierce;
And crescent gold hung in your ears,
Shone, wrought morisco; and each shoe,
Cordovan leather spangled blue,
Glanced merriment; and from large arms
To well-turned ankles all your charms
Blew flutterings and glitterings
Of satin bands and beaded strings;
And round each arm’s fair thigh one fold,
And graceful wrists, a twisted gold
Coiled serpents’ tails fixed in each head,
Convulsive-jeweled glossy red.
In flowers and trimmings, to the jar
Of mandolin and low guitar,
You in the grated patio
Danced: the curled coxcombs’ flirting row
Rang pleased applause. I saw you dance,
With wily motion and glad glance
Voluptuous, the wild romalis,
Where every movement was a kiss
Of elegance delicious, wound
In your Basque tambourine’s dull sound;
Or as the ebon castanets
Clucked out dry time in unctuous jets,
Saw angry José through the grate
Glare on us a pale face of hate,
When some indecent colonel there
Presumed too lewdly for his ear.
Candilejo, two shadows meet—
Flash sabres crossed within the moon—
Clash rapidly—a dead dragoon.