What mortal disaccord
    Hath exiled so from Truth the mind unstable? 
        Why of its blest reward
        Forgetful, lost, unable,
    Seeks it each shadowy fraud and guileful fable?

        Man lies in slumber dead,
    Like one that of his danger hath no feeling,
        The while with silent tread
        Those restless orbs are wheeling,
    And, as they fly, his hours of life are stealing.

        O mortals, wake and rise;
    Think of the loss that on your lives is pressing;
        The soul, that never dies,
        Ordain’d for endless blessing,
    How shall it live, false shows for truth caressing?

        Ah, raise your fainting eyes
    To that firm sphere which still new glory weareth,
        And scorn the low disguise
        The flattering world prepareth,
    And all the world’s poor thrall hopeth or feareth.

        O what is all earth’s round,
    Brief scene of man’s proud strife and vain endeavour,
        Weigh’d with that deep profound,
        That tideless Ocean-river,
    That onward bears Time’s fleeting forms for ever?

        Once meditate, and see
    That fix’d accord in wondrous variance given,
        The mighty harmony
        Of courses all uneven,
    Wherein each star keeps time and place in heaven.

        Who can behold that store
    Of light unspent, and not, with very sighing,
        Burst earth’s frail bonds, and soar,
        With soul unbodied flying,
    From this sad place of exile and of dying?

        There dwelleth sweet Content;
    There is the reign of Peace; there, throned in splendour,
        As one pre-eminent,
        With dove-like eyes so tender,
    Sits holy Love,—­honour and joy attend her.

        There is reveal’d whate’er
    Of Beauty thought can reach; the source internal
        Of purest Light, that ne’er
        To darkness yields; eternal
    Bloom the bright flowers in clime for ever vernal.

        There would my spirit be,
    Those quiet fields and pleasant meads exploring,
        Where Truth immortally,
        Her priceless wealth outpouring,
    Feeds through the blissful vales the souls of saints adoring.

The fact that the original is cast in the lira form would compel one to assign this composition to a date not earlier than 1542, when Garcilasso’s poems were first published.  Nothing, however, could be more remote from Garcilasso’s nebulous half-pagan melancholy; we are no less distant from the pseudonymous nymphs of Cetina and Francisco de la Torre:  the elegant Amaryllis of the one, the elusive Filis of the other, though destined to be re-incarnated by a tribe of later poets, find no place in these stately numbers.  Luis de Leon does not emulate Alcazar’s epigrammatic wit, nor Herrera’s Petrarchan sweetness, nor Ercilla’s tumultuous rhetoric.  He has an individuality all his own, the moral purpose of the man is wedded to the poet’s art in such wise that he strikes a note individual and completely new in Spanish literature—­a note rarely heard in any literature till we catch its strain in the verses of him who tells us that