"But the
grandiloquence of the epistle, worthy of Captain Don Alonzo Melendez
himself, calls not for reading, but recitation. Do you sit here as
critic, while I take my stand in the middle of the room, and give it
utterance with all the elocution and pathos I can muster. You must
know that this epistle I hold in my hand, is addressed to me by no
less a personage than the river-god of the Guadiana, who, contrary to
all my notions of mythology, proves to be a gentleman, and not a
lady." And, in a slightly mock-heroic tone, she began to recite it:
Maiden, the sunshine of thine eye,
Flashing my joyous waves along,
The magic of thy soul-lit smile,
Have waked my murmuring voice to song.
Winding through Hispania's mountains,
Watering her sunburnt plains,
I, from earliest time, have gladdened
Dwellers on these wide domains.
I have watched succeeding races,
Peopling my fertile strand,
Marked each varying lovely model,
Moulded by Nature's plastic hand.
Striving still to reach perfection,
Ruthless, she broke each beauteous mould;
Some blemish still deformed her creature,
Some alloy still defiled her gold.
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