[FRAY LUIS DE LEÓN]. Cleric, poet, humanist, mystic, professor at the University of Salamanca. Accused of a violation of church law in publishing a Spanish translation of the Song of Solomon, he was arrested by order of the tribunal of the Inquisition and spent five years in its dungeons. Then, his innocence being made clear, he was released, rehabilitated in the University, and promoted to high honors in his Order (the Augustinians). There is no good edition of his works, but his poems and his prose treatises in expositive theology may be found in vol. 37 of the Biblioteca de autores españoles. His verse is admirable, and is distinguished by its noble diction, the purity of its style, and the simplicity of its expression, qualities especially noticeable in the Vida del Campo and the Profecía del Tajo. It shows generally a strongly marked mystical tendency, but bears also the impress of his humanistic temperament. The influence of Horace is everywhere patent in León’s works. With Herrera and Garcilaso, he occupies the highest place among the lyric poets of the age. See Menéndez y Pelayo, De la poesía mística (Estudios de crítica literaria, Madrid, 1884); J. D. M. Ford, Luis de León, the Spanish Poet, Humanist, and Mystic (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. XIV, No. 2); and Blanco-García’s recent treatise on León. See also English poetical versions of several of León’s lyrics made by H. Phillips (Philadelphia, 1883).
[Page 97].—ll. 14-15. An extremely venturesome enjambement. But the entity of mente in adverbs is always clear to the Spanish mind.
l. 24. This poem has been rendered into English verse by W. C. Bryant. Cf. Ticknor, II, 88.
l. 30. agora, i.e., ahora.
[Page 100].—l. 6. el arrebatado, i.e., the sudden, violent and abnormal movement.
ll. 12-13. The Bears are, of course, boreal constellations and regularly above the horizon.
l. 26. León here deals with an unhistorical legend of Arabic origin, according to which the Moors were introduced into Spain in 711, through the treachery of an injured father, Count Julian, whose daughter, sometimes called Cava, King Roderick was said to have seduced. The Spanish poet imitates the situation in Horace’s ode, Pastor quum traheret per freta navibus.
[Page 101].—l. 14. Constantina: a town of the province of Seville.
l. 17. Sansueña: the Spanish kingdom of Sansueña figures in the legends dealing with Charlemagne, and has been identified with Saragossa; cf. the Don Quijote, II, ch. xxvi. For an identification with Saxony cf. F. Hanssen, Sobre la poesía épica de los Visigodos, Santiago, 1892.
l. 19. dende: equivalent to the modern desde.