Learn we the wise unknowing,
Since it so well appears
That what to learning's added
Is taken from our years.
We may dispute, in some respects, the drift of Sister Juana's philosophy; but we cannot question the poetic wisdom of many of her reflections. How true it is that in a multitude of reasons one finds no reason at all; that the rank overgrowth of knowledge does not bear the best fruit; that genius, allied with base substance, grows brighter, by a kind of self-consuming; that wisdom can sometimes find refuge in ignorance! No one, be his fame what it may, has stated a grand and touching truth with better force than appears in Sor Juana's grave misgiving with regard to the genius "which seeks a throne in fire, and finds a sepulchre in tears." Is not this the history, at once sublime and pathetic, of so many failures of the restless intellect? Sor Juana knew how to preach from such a text, for she was a rare scholar, and mistress of verse, and religious woman. The variety of her literary employments was considerable, in comparison with the bulk of Mexican verse and prose, notwithstanding the old-fashioned manners of her cloistered muse. She wrote, in addition to sonnets and romances, the dramatic religious pieces called loas and autos, among which we find dialogues and acts entitled "The Sceptre of St. Joseph," "San Hermengildo," and "The Divine Narciso." Her poetic moods were not, it appears, limited to hymns and to blank-verse; indeed, she had the qualities of a ripe poet—humor, fancy, imagination, able thought, and, if anything else should be added, doubtless the reader will find it in the ideality of a sonnet so superb as the one in praise of Our Lady. Of her religious tenderness we have a fine example in the following lines from "El Divino Narciso," which have been compared by a Mexican critic to the best mystical songs of St. John of the Cross and other Spanish ascetics. They convey the appeal which the Shepherd of Souls makes to a soul which has strayed from the flock:
O my lost lamb,
Thy master all forgetting,
Whither dost erring go?
Behold how now divided
From me, thou partest from thy life!
In my tender kindness,
Thou seest how always loving
I guard thee watchfully,
I free thee of all danger,
And that I give my life for thee.
Behold how that my beauty
Is of all things beloved,
And is of all things sought,
And by all creatures praised.
Still dost thou choose from me to go astray.
I go to seek thee yet,
Although thou art as lost;
But for thee now my life
I cannot still lay down
That once I wished to lose to find my sheep.
Do worthier than thou
Ask these my benefits,
The rivers flowing fair,
The pastures and green glades
Wherein my loving-kindness feedeth thee.
Within a barren field,
In desert land afar,
I found thee, ere the wolf
Had all thy life despoiled,
And prized thee as the apple of mine eye.
I led thee to the verdure
Of my most peaceful ways,
Where thou hast fed at will
Upon the honey sweet
And oil that flowed to thee from out the rock.
With generous crops of grain,
With marrowy substances,
I have sustained thy life,
Made thee most savory food,
And given to thee the juice of fragrant grapes.