Lope de Vega: A Journey Through Love's Verses :D

HUMAN RHYMES

It was the joyful eve of the day when she, unmatched on earth, from mortal prison and human strife ascended to her heavenly homeland;

and it was the age when the new blood that my chest holds burned most brightly, when advice and reason banish the vanity that appetite guides,

when Love first showed me the beautiful eyes of Lucinda in her sun, and burned me as if it were a lightning bolt.

Sweet prison and sweet burning for them; undoubtedly, her fire was my sphere, for seeing myself die, I find rest in them.

From now on, the curly temples of fragrant verbena and myrtle can crown you, reedy Manzanares, for you surpass the mighty current of the Tagus.

Lucinda bathed her beautiful foot in you; it is right that you inherit her golden name, and that with pearls you remain for sands, deserving to kiss her snow and rose.

And I could envy your fortune, but I have shed so many tears in you, (you, good witness to my bitter weeping),

that mixed in your waters, some might have touched Lucinda's tender feet, and turned into your golden sands.

The glorious palm bears clusters, and without love dons barren mourning; Daphne complains in her fruitless laurel, Narcissus in white leaves loses his soul.

The earth is calm without rain, fields produce vile herbs, because Love never paid tribute, Anaxarete's soul laments in its stone.

Gold is born from the love of water and sands, because shells love the dew, filled with oriental pearls.

Do not despise, beautiful Lucinda, mine, for at the setting of the sun, lilies lose their luster, and our age its vigor.

If conceiving is a fault, birth a torment, life a war, death a human end; if after man, earth and vile worm, and after worm, dust and wind;

if wind is nothing, and nothing the foundation, beauty a flower, ambition a tyrant, fame and glory, vain thought, and vain all that thought thinks,

who sails this sea to drown? What is the use of consuming oneself in chimeras, or thinking of anything other than salvation?

What is the use of esteeming oneself and preferring, seeking memory when it must be forgotten, and building when one must depart?

Gentle Zephyr that carried my sad complaints so many times, clear fountains that with my tender burning tears your sweet liquor turned to poison;

forests that scattered my laments, rough mountains present to my woe, rivers that from my eyes always absent, gave poison to the sea, as to a tyrant;

since the harshness of such fierce rigor does not allow me articulated voice, tell my disdain that for it I die.

That if the world sees her transformed into the laurel I hope for in hardness, you will see my forehead crowned by her.

That I have loved before I cannot deny, but then love took with me the black sword, like a skilled friend, marking the blows in fear.

But this time, battling I remain, white the sword and certain the enemy, do not be surprised that I weep its punishment, for I exceed the past love by loving.

When with false arms I fenced, from the wounds I bore on my garment (without touching my chest) the marks;

but in the soul now, my Lucinda, where they have been mortal in pain, and in remedy immortal wounds.

The shepherd who walked in the mountain's cold, at its foot, felling a pine, when the evening star appears lights a fire and sleeps without fear.

The birds leave flight with the night, the ox the field, the pilgrim the path, the sickle the wheat, the scythe the flax, for at last it rests when the sky covers.

I alone, though the night with its mantle spreads sleep and lulls all that lives, my eyes lack rest.

Argus turns them to occasion and weeping, without Mercury's wand to sleep them, for the eyes of the soul are very high.

To go and stay, and with staying depart, to depart without soul, and go with another's soul, to hear the sweet voice of a siren and not be able to detach from the tree;

to burn like the candle and consume, building towers on tender sand; to fall from a heaven, and be a demon in pain, and never repent of being so;

to speak among mute solitudes, to borrow patience on faith, and what is temporary to call eternal;

to believe suspicions and deny truths, this is what they call absence in the world, fire in the soul, and hell in life.

With new ties, like Apollo himself, I found one day in Lucinda's hair, so beautiful, that she seemed to heaven in the dawn's laughter, opening the pole.

A subtle breeze came, and untied it with a gentle blow on my forehead, and I said to love why it wove thousands of cords together for a single bow.

But he replies: "My fugitive, who mocked my arms, today I await to imprison your will anew."

I, sad, who for her die and burn, wanted to break the net, what madness!, for the more I guard myself, the more I entangle.

I want to write, and tears do not let me, I try to cry, and I do not rest so much, I take up the pen again, and tears return, everything prevents my good, everything harasses me.

If tears last, my soul complains, if writing, my eyes, and if in the meantime by death or by comfort I rise, from both hope moves away from me.

Go white at last, paper, and to whom penetrates the center of this chest that ignites I gave (if in such good you can see yourself),

to make my tears the letter, for since it does not feel it, it well understands, that all I write and cry, all is death.

Lucinda, I feel myself burn, and follow the sun that from this fire causes the harm, that so that disillusion does not find me I have deceit as an eternal friend.

I feel the error, I do not feel what I say, to myself I seem strange; my years pass, without a year coming that I am sure of myself with myself.

Oh hard law of love, that all flee the cause of their harm, and I wait for it always on my margin, like a humble river!

But if the stars influence harm, and with those of your eyes I was born and die, how will I overcome them without will?

The tower fell that in the wind made my high punished thoughts, that lie on the ground overthrown when with their extremes they competed.

Daring to reach the sun they wanted, and die in its burning rays, of whose light content and deceived, like the blind moth they burned.

Oh, always hated disillusion, loved when sought, hated when seen, that instead of healing opens the wound!

Would to God you lasted, sweet deceit, that if disillusion gives death, better is a deceit that gives life!

From the coming of rosy Aurora until old Atlas hides the day, my eyes weep with equal persistence their clear sun that other mountains gilds;

and from the chaos where it dwells comes the lazy and cold night, until Venus sends again, I return to weep your rigor, lady.

So neither night helps me, nor day soothes and entertains me, nor do I find a middle in such strange extremes.

My life flies, time runs, and while my hope comes with you, silently the swift years pass.

My broken little boat, cast by so much envy and feigned friendship, of my patience guided by the sea with oars of my pen and my sword,

one without a court and the other poorly cut, you preserved the forces of life, broken among the ports of favor, and among hopes shattered;

follow your star in so many disillusionments, for who did not believe them is surely mad, nor is there a vile enemy nor a true friend.

For you have passed the best years, now for what remains, for it is little, neither fear the sea, nor expect a port.

This imagining if she is at home, if she went out, if they spoke to her, if she was seen; fearing she adorns, adorns and dresses, always watching what happens;

trembling at the other who burns with love, and with estate and soul conquers her; wanting her to resist gold and love, dying if she leaves or marries;

jealous of every rich and young gallant, thinking she thinks of another if she thinks of me patrolling the night and contemplating the day,

obliges, Marcio, to fall in love anew; but knowing how the offense passed, not only disobliges, but cools.

One day Lucinda fed a little bird, and through the bars of the gate the little bird flew from the cage to the free wind where it used to live.

With a sigh at the late occasion she extended her hand, and unable to catch it, she said (and from her cheeks yellow turned the carnation that burned in her snow):

"Where are you going for despising the nest, to the danger of snares and bullets, and flee the owner who adores your beak?"

The little bird heard her, moved, and to the old prison returned its wings, for so much can a woman who cries.

Woman is man's best, and madness to say the worst, her life can be and her delight, her death can be and her poison.

Heaven to the eyes, candid and serene, that many times I equate to hell, for rare to the world I point out her value, for false to man I condemn her rigor.

She gives us her blood, she raises us, heaven has made nothing more ungrateful: she is an angel, and sometimes a harpy.

She loves, hates, treats well, mistreats, and woman is in the end like bloodletting, that sometimes gives health, and sometimes kills.

With hair spread over her back that was the sun's disdain and wonder, Silvia gathered by the green shore of the sea of Cádiz shells in her lap.

The water between the emerald fennel, for her to enter more, humbles its course; she wove a high basket of wicker, and placed it on her forehead as a garland.

But when she abandoned the beach, "Curse," she said, "the water, that so little with its salt burned my feet and clothes."

I was nearby and replied: "Curse the salt in your gracious mouth, that thus has burned my senses."

Heavenly shepherdess of this mountain, for whom the sun, that gilds its rocks, rises sooner to see the white Aurora that conquered the night, that deceives the world,

to whom that holy Shepherd accompanies, who in the staff of his cross adores all the flock that dwells in these mountains and with his mark of his blood bathes.

How do you have, if they call you amber and rose the Mirror, to whom you give tender embraces, dark color, though full of grace?

But though you are dark, you are beautiful, and what much if you have God in arms, that giving you so much sun, you are dark?

To faint, to dare, to be furious, rough, tender, liberal, aloof, encouraged, mortal, dead, alive, loyal, traitor, coward and brave;

to find no center or rest outside good, to show oneself happy, sad, humble, proud, angry, brave, fugitive, satisfied, offended, suspicious;

to flee the face of clear disillusion, to drink poison for smooth liquor, to forget profit, to love harm;

to believe a heaven fits in a hell, to give life and soul to a disillusion; this is love, who tried it knows.

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