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of God--the audacious phrase is of the father and priest Frey Lope--were celebrated with princely pomp and luxury; grandees of Spain were her sponsors; the streets were invaded with carriages from the palace, the verses of the dramatist were sung in the service by the Court tenor Florian, called the "Canary of Heaven;" and the event celebrated in endless rhymes by the genteel poets of the period.
Rarely has a lovelier sacrifice been offered on the altar of superstition. The father, who had been married twice before he entered the priesthood, and who had seen the folly of errant loves without number, twitters in the most innocent way about the beauty and the charm of his child, without one thought of the crime of quenching in the gloom of the cloister the light of that rich young life. After the lapse of more than two centuries we know better than he what the world lost by that lifelong imprisonment. The Marquis of Mo-lins, director of the Spanish Academy, was shown by the ladies of the convent in this year of 1870 a volume of manuscript poems from the hand of Sor Marcela, which prove her to have been one of the most vigorous and original poets of the time. They
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are chiefly mystical and ecstatic, and full of the refined and spiritual voluptuousness of a devout young heart whose pulsations had never learned to beat for earthly objects. M. de Molins is preparing a volume of these manuscripts; but I am glad to present one of the seguidillas here, as an illustration of the tender and ardent fantasies of virginal passion this Christian Sappho embroidered upon the theme of her wasted prayers:--
Let them say to my Lover That here I lie!
The thing of his pleasure, His slave am I.
Say that I seek him
Only for love,
And welcome are tortures
My passion to prove.
Love giving gifts
Is suspicious and cold; I have all, my Beloved,
When thee I hold.
Hope and devotion
The good may gain, I am but worthy
Of passion and pain.
So noble a Lord
None serves in vain,--
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For the pay of my love
Is my love's sweet pain.
I love thee, to love thee,
No more I desire,
By faith is nourished
My love's strong fire.
I kiss thy hands
When I feel their blows,
In the place of caresses
Thou givest me woes.
But in thy chastising
Is joy and peace,
O Master and Love,
Let thy blows not cease!
Thy beauty, Beloved,
With scorn is rife!
But I know that thou lovest me,
Better than life.
And because thou lovest me,
Lover of mine,
Death can but make me
Utterly thine!
I die with longing
Thy face to see;
Ah! sweet is the anguish
Of death to me!