Page 31 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

"My own shadow, cast upon the wall, began to disturb me," he continues.
"The echoes of my own footsteps along the corridors made me pause and

look around. I was traversing scenes fraught with dismal recollections. One
dark passage led down to the mosque where Yusef, the Moorish monarch,

the finisher of the Alhambra, had been basely murdered. In another place I
trod the gallery where another monarch had been struck down by the
poniard of a relative whom he had thwarted in his love."

In a few nights, however, all this was changed; for the moon, which had

been invisible, began to "roll in full splendor above the towers, pouring a
flood of tempered light into every court and hall."

Says Irving, "I now felt the merit of the Arabic inscription on the
walls--’How beauteous is this garden; where the flowers of the earth vie

with the stars of heaven. What can compare with the vase of yon alabaster
fountain filled with crystal water? Nothing but the moon in her fullness,
shining in the midst of an unclouded sky!"

"On such heavenly nights," he goes on, "I would sit for hours at my

window inhaling the sweetness of the garden, and musing on the checkered
fortunes of those whose history was dimly shadowed out in the elegant
memorials around. Sometimes, when all was quiet, and the clock from the

distant cathedral of Granada struck the midnight hour, I have sallied out on
another tour and wandered over the whole building; but how different from

my first tour! No longer dark and mysterious; no longer peopled with
shadowy foes; no longer recalling scenes of violence and murder; all was
open, spacious, beautiful; everything called up pleasing and romantic

fancies; Lindaraxa once more walked in her garden; the gay chivalry of
Moslem Granada once more glittered about the Court of Lions!

"Who can do justice to a moonlight night in such a climate and in such a
place? The temperature of a summer night in Andalusia is perfectly

ethereal. We seem lifted up into an ethereal atmosphere; we feel a serenity
of soul, a buoyancy of spirits, an elasticity of frame, which render mere

existence happiness. But when moonlight is added to all this, the effect is
like enchantment. Under its plastic sway the Alhambra seems to regain its