Canción
translated by Peter Anthony Motteux
What makes me languish and complain?––Oh, ’tis disdain!
What yet more fiercely tortures me?––’Tis jealousy.
How have I patience lost?––By absence crossed.
Then hopes farewell, there’s no relief;
I sink beneath oppressing grief;
Nor can a wretch, without despair,
Scorn, jealousy, and absence bear.
What in my breast, this anguish drove?––Intruding love.
What could such mighty ills create?––Blind fortune’s hate.
What cruel powers my fate approve?––The powers above.
Then let me bear and cease to moan;
’Tis glorious thus to be undone;
When these invade, who dares oppose?
Heaven, love, and fortune are my foes. What shall I find a speedy cure?––Death is sure.
No milder means to set me free?––Inconstancy.
Can nothing else my pains assuage?––Distracting age.
What! die or change? ––Lucinda lose?––
Oh, let me rather madness choose!
But judge, ye gods, what we endure
When death or madness is the cure!
From Hispanic Notes & Monographs: Essays, Studies, and Brief Biographies Issued by the Hispanic Society of America (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920) edited by Thomas Walsh. This poem is in the public domain.
Miguel de Cervantes
Best known as the author of Don Quixote, one of the most significant works of world literature and, in the opinion of many scholars, the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in Alcalá de Henares, Spain, on September 29, 1547—the same year in which both Henry VIII and the French king Francis I died, as well as the year in which Ivan the Terrible became tsar of Russia. The surname, Cervantes, may have originated in Galicia, a coastal region in northwestern Spain.