It was chiefly in Spanish literature at this time that Nature was used allegorically.  Tieck[19] says:  ’In Calderon’s poetry, and that of his contemporaries, we often find, in romances and song-like metres, most charming descriptions of the sea, mountains, gardens, and woody valleys, but almost always used allegorically, and with an artistic polish which ends by giving us, not so much a real impression of Nature, as one of clever description in musical verse, repeated again and again with slight variations.’  This is true of Leon, but far more of Calderon, since it belongs to the very essence of drama.  But, despite his passion for description and his Catholic and conventional tone, there is inexhaustible fancy, splendid colour, and a modern element of individuality in his poems.  His heroes are conscious of their own ego, feel themselves to be ’a miniature world,’ and search out their own feelings ’in the wild waves of emotion’ (as Aurelian, for example, in Zenobia).

Fernando says in The Constant Prince: 

  These flowers awoke in beauty and delight
  At early dawn, when stars began to set;
  At eve they leave us but a fond regret,
  Locked in the cold embraces of the night. 
  These shades that shame the rainbow’s arch of light. 
  Where gold and snow in purple pomp are met,
  All give a warning man should not forget,
  When one brief day can darken things so bright. 
  ’Tis but to wither that the roses bloom—­
  ’Tis to grow old they bear their beauteous flowers,
  One crimson bud their cradle and their tomb. 
  Such are man’s fortunes in this world of ours;
  They live, they die; one day doth end their doom,
  For ages past but seem to us like hours.

The warning which Zenobia gives her captor in his hour of triumph to beware of sudden reverses of fortune is finely conceived: 

  Morn comes forth with rays to crown her,
  While the sun afar is spreading
  Golden cloths most finely woven
  All to dry her tear-drops purely. 
  Up to noon he climbs, then straightway
  Sinks, and then dark night makes ready
  For the burial of the sea
  Canopies of black outstretching—­
  Tall ships fly on linen pinions,
  On with speed the breezes send it,
  Small the wide seas seem and straitened,
  To its quick flight onward tending. 
  Yet one moment, yet one instant,
  And the tempest roars, uprearing
  Waves that might the stars extinguish,
  Lifted for that ship’s o’erwhelming. 
  Day, with fear, looks ever nightwards,
  Calms must storm await with trembling;
  Close behind the back of pleasure
  Evermore stalks sadness dreary.

In Life’s a Dream Prince Sigismund, chained in a dark prison, says: