Pretty Poem In Spanish

I came across a pretty poem in Spanish, by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, so here is a very rough rendering into English, along with the original. 

Maybe the sun will be clouded forever. 

Maybe the sea will dry up in an instant. 

Maybe earth's axis will shatter 

Like brittle crystal. 

All this will happen! It may be that death 

Will cover me up with its funeral crepe 

But never extinguished in me will be 

The flame of your love. 

Amor eterno 

Podrá nublarse el sol eternamente; 

Podrá secarse en un instante el mar; 

Podrá romperse el eje de la tierra 

Como un débil cristal. 

¡Todo sucederá! Podrá la muerte 

Cubrirme con su fúnebre crespón; 

Pero jamás en mí podrá apagarse 

La llama de tu amor.

In Spain

In Spain, it’s never much of a search 

To find a mosque turned into a church. 

That bell tower, now so pleasantly ringing, 

Was once a minaret, hauntingly singing. 

The language itself is Latin at base, 

But with Arabic sprinkled all over the place. 

A massive civilizational clash, 

Leaving behind this cultural mash. 

Everywhere there is evidence 

Of this collision of continents.

250 Years

Two hundred and fifty years since they declared! 

I've been alive for more than a quarter of that, 

Observing closely who my people are. 

I have to say: don’t sell my people short. 

We are not always right, for awful things 

Have been done in our name, beneath our flag, 

But more than most we learn by our mistakes, 

Experimentalists, empiricists, 

We get it in our mind to just try something, 

And sometimes it’s a masterful success, 

But other times a grim catastrophe, 

At which point you will see us shrug our shoulders 

And then move on to try out something else. 

And that alone, that willingness to shrug, 

And just move on, has served the country well, 

This quarter of a thousand years, this stretch 

Of time since first we struggled to be free.