Explore "Say that we Saw Spain Die" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Say that we saw Spain die. O splendid bull, how well you fought!
Lost from the first.
. the tossed, the replaced, the / watchful torero with gesture elegant and spry,
Before the dark, the tiring but the unglazed eye deploying the bright cape, / Which hid for once not air, but the enemy indeed, the authentic shape, / A thousand of him, interminably into the ring released... the turning beast at length between converging colours caught.
Save for the weapons of its skull, a bull / Unarmed, considering, weighing, charging
Almost a world, itself without ally.
Say that we saw the shoulders more than the mind confused, so profusely / Bleeding from so many more than the accustomed barbs, the game gone vulgar, the rules abused.
Say that we saw Spain die from loss of blood, a rustic reason, in a reinforced / And proud punctilious land, no espada- / A hundred men unhorsed, / A hundred horses gored, and the afternoon aging, and the crowd growing restless (all, all so much later than planned), / And the big head heavy, sliding forward in the sand, and the tongue dry with sand,-no espada / Toward that hot neck, for the delicate and final thrust, having dared trust forth his hand.