Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant

"Dilo tu, amor, si lo viste;
¡Mas ay! que de lastimado
Diste otro nudo a la venda,
Para no ver lo que la pasado."

I am sorry to find so poor a conceit deforming so spirited a composition as this old ballad, but I have preserved it in the version. It is one of those extravagances which afterward became so common in Spanish poetry, when Gongora introduced the estilo culto, as it was called.

22

This personification of the passion of Love, by Peyre Vidal, has been referred to as a proof of how little the Provençal poets were indebted to the authors of Greece and Rome for the imagery of their poems.

23

The original of these lines is thus given by John of Nostradamus, in his Lives of the Troubadours, in a barbarous Frenchified orthography:

"Touta kausa mortala una fes perirá,
Fors que l'amour de Dieu, que touiours durará.
Tous nostres cors vendran essuchs, come fa l'eska,
Lous Aubres leyssaran lour verdour tendra e fresca,
Lous Ausselets del bosc perdran lour kant subtyeu,
E non s'auzira plus lou Rossignol gentyeu.
Lous Buols al Pastourgage, e las blankas fedettas
Sent'ran lous agulhons de las mortals Sagettas,
Lous crestas d'Aries fiers, Renards, e Loups espars
Kabrols, Cervys, Chamous, Senglars de toutes pars,
Lous Ours hardys e forts, seran poudra, e Arena.
Lou Daulphin en la Mar, lou Ton, e la Balena,
Monstres impetuous, Ryaumes, e Comtas,
Lous Princes, e lous Reys, seran per mort domtas.
E nota ben eysso káscun: la Terra granda,
(Ou l'Escritura ment) lou fermament que branda,
Prendra autra figura. Enfin tout perirá,
Fors que l'Amour de Dieu, que touiours durará."

24

Las Auroras de Diana, in which the original of these lines is contained, is, notwithstanding it was praised by Lope de Vega, one of the worst of the old Spanish Romances, being a tissue of riddles and affectations, with now and then a little poem of considerable beauty.

25

The author began this poem in rhyme. The following is the first draught of it as far as he proceeded, in a stanza which he found it convenient to abandon:

A midnight black with clouds is on the sky;
A shadow like the first original night
Folds in, and seems to press me as I lie;
No image meets the vainly wandering sight,
And shot through rolling mists no starlight gleam
Glances on glassy pool or rippling stream.

No ruddy blaze, from dwellings bright within,
Tinges the flowering summits of the grass;
No sound of life is heard, no village din,
Wings rustling overhead or steps that pass,
While, on the breast of Earth at random thrown,
I listen to her mighty voice alone.

A voice of many tones: deep murmurs sent
From waters that in darkness glide away,
From woods unseen by sweeping breezes bent,
From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day,
And hollows of the invisible hills around,
Blent in one ceaseless, melancholy sound.

O Earth! dost thou, too, sorrow for the past?
Mourn'st thou thy childhood's unreturning hours,
Thy springs, that briefly bloomed and faded fast,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
Thy forests of the elder time, decayed
And gone with all the tribes that loved their shade?

Mourn'st thou that first fair time so early lost,
The golden age that lives in poets' strains,
Ere hail or lightning, whirlwind, flood, or frost
Scathed thy green breast, or earthquakes whelmed thy plains,
Ere blood upon the shuddering ground was spilt,
Or night was haunted by disease and guilt?

Or haply dost thou grieve for those who die?
For living things that trod a while thy face,
The love of thee and heaven, and now they lie
Mixed with the shapeless dust the wild winds chase?
I, too, must grieve, for never on thy sphere
Shall those bright forms and faces reappear.

Ha! with a deeper and more thrilling tone,
Rises that voice around me: 'tis the cry
Of Earth for guilt and wrong, the eternal moan
Sent to the listening and long-suffering sky,
I hear and tremble, and my heart grows faint,
As midst the night goes up that great complaint.

26

Close to the city of Munich, in Bavaria, lies the spacious and beautiful pleasure-ground, called the English Garden, in which these lines were written, originally projected and laid out by our countryman, Count Rumford, under the auspices of one of the sovereigns of the country. Winding walks, of great extent, pass through close thickets and groves interspersed with lawns; and streams, diverted from the river Isar, traverse the grounds swiftly in various directions, the water of which, stained with the clay of the soil it has corroded in its descent from the upper country, is frequently of a turbid-white color.

27

This song refers to the expedition of the Vermonters, commanded by Ethan Allen, by whom the British fort of Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain, was surprised and taken, in May, 1775.

28