From limb to limb the frosts aspire,
Her vitals curdle with the cold;
The blood forgets its crimson fire,
The veins that e'er its motion rolled;
Till now the virgin's glorious mould
Was wholly into marble changed;
On which the Salaminians gazed,
Less at the prodigy amazed,
Than of the crime avenged.
XI.
Then tempt not thou Fate's angry arms,
By cruel frown, or icy taunt;
But let thy perfect deeds and charms
To poets' harps, Divinest, grant
Themes worthy their immortal vaunt;
Else must our weeping strings presume
To celebrate in strains of woe,
The justice of some signal blow,
That strikes thee to the tomb."
We have no room to multiply passages, and with this ode must conclude our specimens. Garcilaso is a happy type of a Spanish poet; and when we think that such men were the children of the old liberty of Spain, how deeply we must regret the worse than iron rule that blasted the race; while we view in any attempt to regain her ancient freedom, a promise of a new people, to adorn the annals of mankind with all the virtues of heroism and all the elevation of genius.
[14]This anecdote is usually told as appertaining to the father of the poet; but the name was assumed by the family at an earlier date. There is a romance introduced in the Guerras Civiles de Granada, commemorating this action. Sedano and Wiffen are the authorities on which this biography is grounded. Bouterwek tells only what Sedano had done before him; in the earlier portion of his work, Sissingularymondi is scarcely more than a rifacciamento of Bouterwek.
"Temperate, when winter waves its snowy wing,
Is the sweet water of this sylvan spring;
And when the heats of summer scorch the grass,
More cold than snow: in your clear looking-glass,
Fair waves! the memory of that day returns,
With which my soul still shivers, melts, and burns;
Gazing on your clear depth and lustre pure,
My peace grows troubled and my joys obscure.
* * * *
This lucid fount, whose murmurs fill the mind,
The verdant forests waving with the wind,
The odours wafted from the mead, the flowers
In which the wild bee sits and sings for hours,
These might the moodiest misanthrope employ,
Make sound the sick, and turn distress to joy."
[16]Wiffen.
[17]Wiffen.