Couplets for the death of his father (III) (poem by Jorge Manrique)
Our lives are rivers
that are going to hit the sea,
What is dying?
there go the lordships,
rights to end
and consume;
there the flowing rivers,
there the other medium ones
and more boys;
and when they arrive, they are the same
those who live by their hands
and the rich.
Copla III of “Coplas por la muerte de su padre” by Jorge Manrique is one of the most famous reflections in Spanish literature. about death and equality between people.
Epigram (poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Sir, I admit your general rule,
that every poet is a fool,
but you yourself can serve to demonstrate,
that not every fool is a poet.
Coleridge turns an insult into a sharp response in these short verses. It is an ingenious defense of poets and a reminder that the insult only exposes the one who utters it and not the one who receives it.
The Sick Rose (poem by William Blake)
You are sick, oh rose!
The invisible worm
that flies, at night,
in the howling of the wind,
your bed discovered
of scarlet joy,
and his dark and secret love
consume your life.
A short, mysterious poem full of symbolism. Like much of William Blake’s work, it invites multiple interpretations. It is a metaphor for how hidden forces (emotional, spiritual or social) can silently destroy what is beautiful and joyful.
Because of your green eyes I would get lost (poem by Amado Nervo)
Because of your green eyes I would get lost,
siren of those that Ulysses, sagacious,
loved and feared.
Because of your green eyes I would get lost.
For your green eyes in what, fleeting,
Sometimes melancholy usually shines;
for your green eyes so full of peace,
mysterious like my hope;
for your green eyes, effective spell,
I would save myself.
A tender love poem by the Mexican poet and writer Amado Nervo who plays with paradox: losing oneself and saving oneself, all through the power of a woman’s green eyes, which are mysterious, peaceful and almost magical.
The Eagle (poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
It clings to the cliff with its crooked claws;
close to the sun in lonely lands,
upright, surrounded by the celestial world.
The wrinkled sea crawls beneath her;
observes from the wall of his mountain,
and falls like lightning.
Tennyson portrays in this short poem a image of isolation and majestic stillness followed by a sudden and explosive action. In just six verses, he captures both the grandeur of nature and the strength of the eagle.
Rosary (poem by José Martí)
I thought of you, of your hair
that the shadow world would envy,
and I put a point of my life into them
and I wanted to dream that you were mine.
I walk the earth with my eyes
raised -oh, my eagerness!- to such a height
that in haughty anger or miserable blushes
The human creature lit them.
Live: -Know how to die; that’s how it afflicts me
this unfortunate search, this fierce good,
and all the Being in my soul is reflected,
and searching without faith, I die of faith.
A poem full of longing, introspection and melancholy of the Cuban poet José Martí. It combines romantic desire with existential struggle and shows how love, spiritual aspiration and disillusionment intertwine in the soul.
Raw winter (poem by Yosa Buson)
Harsh winter:
the world of one color,
the sound of the wind.
A haiku that paints a serene winter scene with just a few brushstrokes: stillness, a single color (white), wind. Buson invites us to immerse ourselves in that silence and feel the weight of stillness and beauty.
Peace (poem by Alfonsina Storni)
We go towards the trees… the dream
It will be done in us by celestial virtue.
We go towards the trees; the night
It will be soft for us, the sadness will be light.
We go towards the trees, the soul
Drowsy with wild perfume.
But be silent, do not speak, be pious;
Don’t wake up the sleeping birds.
In this short poem, the Argentine poet and writer Alfonsina Storni makes an introspective reflection on the desire to rest, be silent and in connection with natureto. With a soft tone, almost like a whispered prayer, it evokes the healing power of the natural world.
Copla VIII (poem by Garcilaso de la Vega)
No one can be happy,
lady, nor unhappy,
but that he has looked at you.
Because the glory of seeing you
at that point it is removed
that they think of deserving you.
So, without knowing you,
no one can be happy,
lady, nor unhappy,
but that he has looked at you.
The poet of the Golden Age Garcilaso de la Vega makes in this poem a reflection on love, longing and the paradoxical power of beauty. Just seeing it is enough to change a soul, although the moment one dreams of having it, that beauty turns into loss.
Search and long for peace (poem by Rosalía de Castro)
Seek and long for peace…
but… who will calm him?
What you daydream about,
asleep he dreams again.
That today as yesterday, and tomorrow
which today, in its eternal desire,
to find the good you desire
–when he only finds evil–,
always dreaming condemned,
can never calm down.
A short but intense poem by Rosalía de Castro, in which she tells us about the search for inner peace and how this always seems unattainable. It is a reflection on the nature of the human being, trapped in a cycle of longing and disillusionment.
Yesterday and today (poem by Concepción de Estevarena)
-What is existence, and what is an oath?
-I told you yesterday, and you responded-:
-an oath is giving the faith of a soul,
and life is love, love and light.
Today, the same as yesterday, I ask you
and smiling you answer me now:
-An oath, an echo that is lost;
Life, hours that come… and go.
The romantic poetess born in Seville, Concepción de Estevarena, reflects in these verses on the changing nature of love, life and the word given over time (or after a disappointment). It is a dialogue in two times: yesterday and today, where the contrast between the responses shows the evolution from illusion to resignation.
Neither this mountain, this air, nor this river (poem by Luis de Góngora)
Not in this mountain, this air, nor this river
Run wild, fly bird, fish nothing,
From whom it is not listened to attentively
The sad voice of my sad cry;
And although in the strength of the summer
To the wind my entrusted complaint,
When each one of them likes the most
Cool cave, green tree, cold stream,
In compassion moved by my tears,
They leave the shadow, the branch and the depth,
Which one to hear the sweet song
Of him who, from Strimon in the thicket,
He suspended them a hundred thousand times. So much
My evil can, and its sweetness can!
This famous poem by Luis de Góngora, one of the greatest representatives of the Spanish Golden Age, shows the power of human pain, capable of moving even nature. Using rich musicality and mythological references, the poet transforms the lament for love into a song that keeps natural life in suspense.
She sat and sang (poem by Christina Rossetti)
She always sat and sang,
By the green banks of the stream,
Watching the fish jump and play,
Under the cheerful ray of the sun.
I sat and cried always,
Under the darkest of the moon,
Seeing the buds of May,
Bathing the stream with tears.
I cried for the memory;
Her for hope:
My tears drowned in the sea,
His song died in the air.
A melancholic reflection by 19th-century British poet Christina Rossetti on the contrast between two inner worlds, joy and sadnessand how both are fleeting and ephemeral.
Rhyme XCI (poem by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer)
The sun may be clouded forever;
The sea can dry up in an instant;
The axis of the earth could break
Like a weak glass.
Everything will happen! May death
Cover me with your funereal crepe;
But it can never go out in me
The flame of your love.
Another well-known rhyme by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer in which tells us about eternal love. The poet proclaims the invincibility of true love, even in the face of the end of the world or one’s own death.
Proverbs and songs – XXIX (Poem by Antonio Machado)
Walker, they are your footprints
the road and nothing more;
Walker, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.
By walking the path is made,
and when I look back
you see the path that never
it has to be stepped on again.
Walker there is no path
but wakes in the sea.
Tomorrow at dawn (Poem by Victor Hugo)
Tomorrow, at dawn, when the field whitens,
I will leave. Look, I know you’re waiting for me.
I will go through the forest, I will go through the mountains.
I can’t stay away from you any longer.
I will walk, eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing anything around, without hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, back bent, hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.
I will not even look at the gold of the evening that falls,
Nor the distant sails descending towards Harfleur,
And when I arrive, I will place on your grave,
A bouquet of green holly and flowering heather.
Sonnet 18 (William Shakespeare Poem)
Could I compare you to the summer?
Your beauty and your temperance are greater.
Intense wind beats May flowers
and summer ends without delay
The blue or blue eye shines
or its golden light fades;
and the beautiful in its beauty declines,
By nature or chance it disappears.
Your eternal summer will never die,
nor will your beauty abandon you,
Nor will Gallic Death make you in its bosom,
Well, in my verses you must endure:
As long as there is a man or eyes that see,
My verses that recreate you will live.
I love, you love (Poem by Rubén Darío)
Love, love, love, love always, with everything
the being and with the earth and with the sky,
with the light of the sun and the dark of the mud;
love for all science and love for all desire.
And when the mountain of life
may it be hard and long and high and full of abysses,
love the immensity that is lit with love
and burn in the fusion of our very breasts!
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