In the midst of these romantic wars, there sprung up a species of poetry which in its simplicity and truth resembles the old English ballads, but which, from the nature of the events it commemorates, is conceived in a loftier and more chivalrous tone. The most ancient of these is a poem on the Cid, written an hundred and fifty years before the time of Dante: its versification is barbarous. It was written in the infancy of language; but it displays touches of nature, and a vivacity of action, that show it to have been the work of men of an heroic and virile age. By degrees the romances or ballads of Spain assumed a lighter and more tripping rhythm, fitter to be easily remembered and to be accompanied by music. These metrical compositions were called _redondillas._[6] Boutervek imagines that they may be considered as a relic of the songs of the Roman soldiers. There was something singularly popular in their freedom from constraint, and catching in their effect on the ear. The sonorous harmony of the Spanish language gave them dignity; they were easy to compose, easy to remember; they required only a subject, and the words flowed, as it were, with the facility of a running stream. There are several volumes, called the Cancionero general and Romancero general, filled with these compositions. The most singular circumstance is, that they are nearly all anonymous. No doubt, as language improved, they were altered and amended from oral tradition, and no one had a right to claim undivided authorship. Their subjects were love and war, and came home to the heart of every Spaniard: the sentiments were simple, yet heroic; the action was always impassioned, and sometimes tragic. Doctor Bowring, who has a happy facility in rendering the poetry of foreign nations into our own, has been more felicitous than any other author in translating these compositions. His volume is well known, and we will not quote largely from it, as we are tempted. One poem, which Boutervek pronounces to be untranslatable through its airiness and lightness, we present as a specimen of that talent, so peculiar to the redondilla, of catching and portraying a sentiment, as it were, by sketches and hints, where the reader fills up the picture from his own imagination, and is pleased by the very vagueness which incites him to exert that faculty. "'Lovely flow'ret, lovely flow'ret-- Oh! what thoughts your beauties move! When I pressed thee to my bosom, Little did I know of love; Now that I have learnt to love thee. Seeking thee in vain I rove.' 'But the fault was thine, young warrior, Thine it was--it was not mine; He who brought thy earliest letter, Was a messenger of thine; And he told me--graceless traitor-- Yes! he told me--lying one-- That thou wert already married In the province of Leon; Where thou hadst a lovely lady, And, like flowers too, many a son.'