What mad ambition takes us From self-forgetful state, If 'tis to live so little We make our knowledge great? Oh! si como hay de saber, Hubiera algun seminario, O escuela, donde á ignorar Se enseñara los trabajos! Oh! if we must have knowledge, I would there were some school Wherein to teach not knowing Life's woes, should be the rule. ¡Que felizmente viviera, El que flotamente cauto; Burlara las amenazas Del influjo de los astros! Happy shall be his living Whose life no rashness mars; He shall laugh at all the threatenings Of the magic of the stars! Aprendamos á ignorar Pensamientos, pues hallamos, Que cuanto añado al discurso, Tanto le usurpo á los años. Learn we the wise unknowing, Since it so well appears That what to learning's added Is taken from our years. We may dispute, in some respects, the drift of Sister Juana's philosophy; but we cannot question the poetic wisdom of many of her reflections. How true it is that in a multitude of reasons one finds no reason at all; that the rank overgrowth of knowledge does not bear the best fruit; that genius, allied with base substance, grows brighter, by a kind of self-consuming; that wisdom can sometimes find refuge in ignorance! No one, be his fame what it may, has stated a grand and touching truth with better force than appears in Sor Juana's grave misgiving with regard to the genius "which seeks a throne in fire, and finds a sepulchre in tears." Is not this the history, at once sublime and pathetic, of so many failures of the restless intellect? Sor Juana knew how to preach from such a text, for she was a rare scholar, and mistress of verse, and religious woman. The variety of her literary employments was considerable, in comparison with the bulk of Mexican verse and prose, notwithstanding the old-fashioned manners of her cloistered muse. She wrote, in addition to sonnets and romances, the dramatic religious pieces called loas and autos, among which we find dialogues and acts entitled "The Sceptre of St. Joseph," "San Hermengildo," and "The Divine Narciso." Her poetic moods were not, it appears, limited to hymns and to blank-verse; indeed, she had the qualities of a ripe poet--humor, fancy, imagination, able thought, and, if anything else should be added, doubtless the reader will find it in the ideality of a sonnet so superb as the one in praise of Our Lady. Of her religious tenderness we have a fine example in the following lines from "El Divino Narciso," which have been compared by a Mexican critic to the best mystical songs of St. John of the Cross and other Spanish ascetics. They convey the appeal which the Shepherd of Souls makes to a soul which has strayed from the flock: