Thou seekest other fields
With them that did not know
Thy fathers, honored not
Thy elders, and in this
Thou dost excite my own displeasure grave.
And for that thou hast sinned
I'll hide from thee my face,
Before whose light the sun
Its feeble glory pales;
From thee, ingrate, perverse, and most unfaithful one.
Shall my displeasure's scourge
Thy verdant fields destroy,
The herb that gives thee food;
And shall my fires lay waste,
Even from the top of highest mountains old.
My lightning arrows shall
Be drawn, and hunger sharp
Shall cut the threads of life,
And evil birds of prey
And fiercest beasts shall lie in wait for thee.
Shall grovelling serpents show
The venom of their rage,
By different ways of death
My rigors shall be wrought;
Without thee by the sword, within thee by thy fears.
Behold I am thy Sovereign,
And there is none more strong;
That I am life and death,
That I can slay and save,
And nothing can escape from out my hand.
Our last quotation from Sister Juana's poems will be one of those tributes which, in verse or prose, she so often paid to the Blessed Virgin. It is a song taken from her villancicos, or rhymes for festivals. The literary manners of her time seem to have obscured the native excellence of her thought, but the buoyant style of the following lines meets with little objection from her modern Mexican critic:
To her who in triumph, the beautiful queen,
Descends from the airs of the region serene;
To her who illumines its vaguest confine
With auroras of gold, and of pearl and carmine;
To her whom a myriad of voices confessed
The lady of angels, the queen of the blest:
Whose tresses celestial are lightly outborne
And goldenly float in the glory of morn,
And waving and rising would seek to o'erwhelm
Like the gulfs of the Tibar an ivory realm:
From whose graces the sunlight may learn how to shine,
And the stars of the night take a brilliance divine,
We sing thee rejoicing while praises ascend,
O sinless, O stainless! live, live without end.
The scarcity of the poems of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, even in her native land, is cause for wonder, but not if we first remark that still greater marvel—the long-continued discomposure of Mexican society. It is one hundred and seventy years since the parchment-bound book, from which we have drawn a number of facts in the life of the Poetisa, was published. Our impression of the rarity and age of her printed works, as derived from acquaintance with educated Mexicans in their own country, tempts us to doubt whether they have been issued in any complete shape during the present century. For a good portion of the extracts we have presented we are indebted to an intelligent and scholarly review prepared in Mexico, two years ago, by Don Francisco Prinentel, the author of a number of books on the races and languages of Mexico. Outside of the monastic or rich private libraries of that country, it is doubtless a task of much difficulty to find the poems of Sor Juana. For this reason we are disposed to excuse the able American historian of Spanish literature for omitting everything in relation to her except the mere mention of her name as a lyrical writer. It is hoped, however, that this notice of her life and works, probably the first which has appeared in the United States, will supply the omission of what should be a chief fact in any American notice of Spanish literature. The claim which we make for Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, as regards the literature of the New World, is not short of the very highest.