Prismatics :: :: University of Virginia Library

Pretty Niña, why this sorrow
In thy life's auspicious morning?
Must thy cheek its paleness borrow
From the ashen hues of sorrow,
When thy youth's bright day is dawning?
Why with hidden ill repineth
That pure virgin heart of thine?
Heart where grace and love combineth,
Free from stain, as star that shineth
Through the azure crystalline.
Why should eyes like thine be shrouded
In their tearful radiate fringes?
Eyes, whose brightness when unclouded

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Shineth like the moon unshrouded,
When her beams the lakelet tinges.
Thou, in thy sweet pensive dolor,
Still more beauteous seem'st to me:
Ah, I see the truant color
Chase the gloomy shades of dolor
From my bright divinity!
Tranquil in thy peace thou sleepest,
While those waxen-lidded eyes
Closed upon the world thou keepest,
And thy soul in rapture steepest
With the angel melodies.
In thy tender heart are blended
Sinless grief, and resignation
Calm and placid: though unfriended,
Soon thy suffering will be ended,
Soon restored thy animation.
In thy cheek the lucid blushes
Will return to embellish all;
Soon thy lily forehead flushes
Underneath the rosy blushes
Of the virgin coronal.

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What from grief brings ever pleasure?
What content, from woe and pain?
What turns losses into treasure,
Bringing blisses without measure
To the sorrowed heart again?
`Hope!' my Niña—`Hope,' beloved!
Beautiful, beneficent,
Lo! your griefs are soon remeved,
Lo! your faith and virtue proved,
And the bitter woe is spent.

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