I love thee, to love thee, No more I desire, By faith is nourished My love's strong fire. I kiss thy hands When I feel their blows, In the place of caresses Thou givest me woes. But in thy chastising Is joy and peace, O Master and Love, Let thy blows not cease! Thy beauty, Beloved, With scorn is rife! But I know that thou lovest me, Better than life. And because thou lovest me, Lover of mine, Death can but make me Utterly thine! I die with longing Thy face to see; Ah! sweet is the anguish Of death to me! This is a long digression, but it will be forgiven by those who feel how much of beautiful and pathetic there is in the memory of this mute nightingale dying with her passionate music all unheard in the silence and shadows. It is to me the most purely poetic association that clings about the grave of Cervantes. This vein of mysticism in religion has been made popular by the recent canonization of Saint Theresa, the ecstatic nun of Avila. In the ceremonies that celebrated this event there were three prizes awarded for odes to the new saint. Lope de Vega was chairman of the committee of award, and Cervantes was one of the competitors. The prizes it must be admitted were very tempting: first, a silver pitcher; second, eight yards of camlet; and third, a pair of silk stockings. We hope Cervantes's poem was not the best. We would rather see him carry home the stuff for a new cloak and pourpoint, or even those very attractive silk stockings for his shrunk shank, than that silver pitcher which he was too Castilian ever to turn to any sensible use. The poems are published in a compendium of the time, without indicating the successful ones; and that of Cervantes contained these lines, which would seem hazardous in this colder age, but which then were greatly admired:-- "Breaking all bolts and bars, Comes the Divine One, sailing from the stars, Full in thy sight to dwell: And those who seek him, shortening the road, Come to thy blest abode, And find him in thy heart or in thy cell." The anti-climax is the poet's, and not mine.