These verses can scarcely allude to anything but the Alpujarras rising of 1568-1571, and the conjecture hardens into certainty in view of the mention of Alonso and Poqueira: this is clearly the Alonso Portocarrero who, as Hurtado de Mendoza records, perished at Poqueira, 'trabado del veneno usado dende los tiempos antiguos entre cazadores'. This poem must have been written when Luis de Leon was at least forty-one. Virtud, hija del cielo, in mentioning the Miño, refers to Portocarrero's appointment in Galicia; and as Portocarrero's term of office appears to have lasted from 1571 to 1580, the poem cannot be dated earlier than 1571 when Luis de Leon was over forty-three. If the mention of la morisca armada in the lines A Santiago glances at the battle of Lepanto which was fought on October 7, 1571, then the poem must have been written after that date, when the author was close on forty-four. The verses dedicated to Juan de Grial, with their closing reference to the writer's trials:
Que yo, de un torbellino
traidor acometido, y derrocado
del medio del camino
al hondo, el plectro amado
y del vuelo las alas he quebrado;
the fervent entreaty A todos los santos and its unreserved lament:
No niego, dulce amparo
del alma, que mis males son mayores
que aqueste desamparo;
mas cuanto son peores,
tanto resonaran mas tus loores;
the very beautiful and justly renowned Virgen que el sol mas pura, with its heart-rending supplication:
los ojos vuelve al suelo
y mira un miserable en cárcel dura
cercado de tinieblas y tristeza:
possibly[268] the song Del conocimiento de si mismo, with its significant simile:
el gusanillo de la gente hollado
un rey era, conmigo comparado;
and assuredly the famous quintillas beginning Aqui la envidia y mentira: these compositions were probably composed during, or after, the writer's imprisonment at Valladolid, that is to say between the spring of 1572 and the winter of 1576, when Luis de Leon was from forty-four or forty-five to forty-eight or forty-nine. Del mundo y su vanidad glances at