"'T was in the flowery season of the year,
When fair Europa's ravisher disguised,
(A crescent moon, the arms upon his brow,
And strewed with sunbeams all his glitt'ring skin),
Shines out the glowing honour of the sky,
And the stars pastures in the azure fields,
When he who well the cup of Jove might fill
Mure gracefully than Ida's shepherd boy,
Was wrecked—and scorned as well as far away,
The tears of love and amorous complaints
Gave to the sea, which he then pitying
Imparts to rustling leaves, that to the wind
Repeats the saddest sighs,
Soft as Arion's softest instrument—
And from the mountain top a pine which aye
Struggled with its fierce enemy the North,
There rent a pitying limb—and the brief plank
Became a no small dolphin to the youth
Who wand'ring heedlessly, was forced t'intrust
His way unto a Libyan waste of sea,
And his existence to an ocean-skiff,
At first sucked in, and afterwards thrown forth,
Where not far off a rock there stood, whose top
Was crowned with bulrushes, and feathers warm
With seaweed dank and foam besprent all o'er,
And rest and safety found there where a nest
The bird of Jove had built.
He kissed the sands, and of the broken skiff,
The portion that was thrown upon the beach
He gave the rock—and let the rugged cliffs
Behold his loveliness, for naked stood
The youth.—The ocean first had drunk, and then
Restored his vestments to the yellow sands,
And in the sunshine he extended them,
And the sun licking them with his sweet tongue
Of tempered fire, slowly invests them round,
And sucks the moisture from the smallest thread."[113]
Sismondi only gives half this sentence, but the latter part is the most intelligible; and besides it was difficult to refrain from presenting the reader with the refined image (culta figura) of the manner in which the shipwrecked boy's clothes were dried. In a hurried translation of this sort, the harmony of verse is not preserved; and that, it must be remarked, is great, and one of Gongora's chief beauties. There is, indeed, a sort of dusky gorgeousness throughout; but it makes the reader smile, to be told that this style of poetry was new and unknown, and "superior to aught that man ever before imagined or composed:" that it was to supersede Garcilaso, Herrera, and Gongora himself in his better days. Such was the faith of the cultoristos, such their hope in the estilo culto.
Sismondi's translation of the first part of this sentence runs thus:—"C'était la saison fleurie de l'année dans laquelle le ravisseur déguisé d'Europe, portant sur son front pour armes une demie-lune, et tous les rayons du soleil disséminés sur son front, devenu un honneur brillant du ciel, menait paître des étoiles dans des champs de saphir; lorsque celui qui était bien plus fait pour présenter la coupe à Jupiter que le jeune homme d'Ida, fit naufrage, et confia à la mer de douces plaintes et des larmes d'amour; celle-ci pleine de compassion les transmit aux feuilles qui répétant le triste gémissement du vent comme le doux instrument d'Arion——" Here Sismondi breaks off, for here Gongora becomes particularly obscure. We guess (it is all guessing with the cultoristos), that the poet intends to say, that the pitying waves repeated to the winds the complaints of the wrecked youth, which in compassion tore from the pine the limb that served him as a skiff to save him. Whether the instrument, soft as Arion's, typifies the voice of the youth, or the waves, or the wind, or the pine tree, is an enigma beyond our solving.
[107]This translation is from Mr. Wiffen, to show how simply and beautifully Gongora wrote in his young and unspoiled style, and we give the Spanish of this last song:
"A UNA DAMA PRESENTANDOLA UNAS FLORES.
"De la florida falda
que oy de perlas bordó la Alba luciente,
tegidos en guirnalda,
traslado estos jazmines a tu frente,
que piden con ser flores
blanca a tus sienes, y a tu boca olores.
Guarda destos jazmines
de avejas era un esquadron volante,
onco, si, de clarines,
mas de puntas armado de diamante,
puselas en huida
y cada flor mi cuestra una herida.
Mas Clori que he texido
jazmines al cabello desatado,
y mas besos te pido
que avejas tuvo el esquadron armado,
lisonjas son iguales,
servir yo en flores, pagar tu en panales."
Obras de Gongora, 1633.
[108]Discurso sobre la Nueva Poesia por Lope de Vega.