Ready is Time beneath her brooding wing To break with swelling life the brown earth’s sheath; And fondly do we watch th’ expectant heath For bloom and song the days are ripe to bring. Our heralds even vaunt the birth of spring, While yet, alack! the winter’s blatant breath Defieth trust, and coldly shadoweth With drifts of gray each hope that dares to sing. Yet still we know, as deepest shades foretell The coming of the morn, and lovely sheen Of living sunshine lies asleep between A snow-bound crust and joys that upward well, So, sure of triumph o’er the yielding shell, Are ecstasies of song and matchless green! CALDERON’S AUTOS SACRAMENTALES. I. I. Villemain, in his _Lectures on the Literature of the Middle Ages_, while speaking of the Mysteries performed by the _Confrères de la Passion_, exclaims, “It is to be regretted that at that period the French language was not more fully developed, and that there was no man of genius among the _Confrères de la Passion_. “The subject was admirable: imagine a theatre, which the faith of the people made the supplement of their worship; conceive religion, with the sublimity of its dogmas, put on the stage before convinced spectators, then a poet of powerful imagination, able to use freely all these grand things, not reduced to the necessity of stealing a few tears from us by feigned adventures, but striking our souls with the authority of an apostle and the impassioned magic of an artist, addressing what we believe and feel, and making us shed real tears over subjects which seem not only true, but divine--certainly nothing would have been greater than this poetry!” Such a poet and such poetry Spain possesses in Calderon and his _Autos Sacramentales_, which may be regarded as the completion and perfection of the religious drama of the Middle Ages. Of the modern nations which possess a national popular drama, Spain is the only one where, by the side of the secular stage, there has grown up and been carefully cultivated a religious drama; for this, in England, died with the Mysteries and Moralities. The persistence of the religious drama in Spain is to be explained by the peculiar history of the nation, especially the struggle of centuries with the Moors--a continual crusade fought on their own soil, which inflamed to the highest degree the religious enthusiasm of the people. The Reformation awoke but a feeble echo in Spain, and only served to quicken the masses to greater devotion to doctrines they saw threatened from abroad. The two dogmas of the church which have always been especially dear to the Spaniards are those of the Immaculate Conception and Transubstantiation.