[202.]—Acuña: see note to p. 199.
[204.—15.] The language is obscure, but the meaning seems to be: borrarte (á ti que estás) en mis recuerdos.
[19.] The forced synalepha of yo haga is discordant and incorrect.
[204.—23 to 205.—8.] That is, when the altar was ready for the marriage ceremony, and the home awaited the bride. The reference, apparently, is to a marriage at an early hour in the morning,—a favored time for marriages in Spanish lands.
[206.—1.] la alma, by poetic license, since el alma would make the line too long by one syllable.
[207.]—Peza: see note to p. 199.
[211.]—Darío: with the appearance in 1888 of a small volume of prose and verse entitled Azul, by Rubén Darío (1864-) of Nicaragua, there triumphed in Spanish America the "movement of emancipation," the "literary revolution," which the "decadents" had already initiated in France. As romanticism had been a revolt against the empty formalism of later neo-classicism, so "decadence" was a reaction against the hard, marmoreal forms of the "Parnasse," and in its train there came inevitably a general attack on poetic traditions. This movement was hailed with joy by the young men of Latin America, who are by nature more emotional and who live in a more voluptuous environment than their cousins in Spain; for they had come to chafe at the coldness of contemporary Spanish poetry, at its lack of color and its "petrified metrical forms." With the success of the movement there was for a time a reign of license, when poet vied with poet in defying the time-honored rules, not only of versification, but also of vocabulary and syntax. But as in France, so in Spanish America, "decadence" has had its day, although traces of its passing are everywhere in evidence, and the best that was in it still lingers.
To-day the Spanish-American poets are turning their attention more and more to the study of sociological problems or to the cementing of racial solidarity. These notes ring clear in some recent poems of Darío, and of José S. Chocano of Peru and Rufino Blanco-Fombona of Venezuela. The lines given in the text are an ode which was addressed to Mr. Roosevelt when he was president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. The meter of the poem is mainly the Old Spanish Alexandrine, but with a curious intermingling of lines of nine, ten and eight syllables, and with assonance of the even lines throughout. In all fairness it should be stated here that Señor Darío, in a recent letter to the writer of these Notes, said: "I do not think to-day as I did when I wrote those verses" (Darío: Epístolas y poemas, 1885; Abrojos, 1887; Azul, 1888; Cantos de vida y esperanza, Madrid, 1905; El canto errante, Madrid, 1907).
[212.—8.] Argentina and Chile are the most progressive of the Spanish-American States. The Argentine flag is blue and white, with a sun in the center; the flag of Chile has a white and a red bar, and in one corner a white star on a blue background.