1. First shall the singing spheres be dumb, And cease their rolling motion, Alecto pitiful become, And Pluto move devotion, Ere to thy virtues, printed deep Within my heart, I prove Thoughtless, or leave thine eyes to weep, My soul, my life, my love! 2. Successful Cæsar first shall cease To fight for an ovation, And force defenced Priamedes To sign a recantation, Ere, my sweet idol, thou shalt fret, Neglect in me to trace, Ere I one lineament forget In all that charming face. 3. Sinon shall guilelessly behave, Thais with virtue, Cupid Meekly--Sardanapalus brave, And Solomon grow stupid, Ere, gentle creature, from my mind Thine image flits away, Whose evermore I am, resigned Thy biddings to obey. 4. Swart Ethiopia shall grow chill With wintry congelation, Cold Scythia hot, and Scylla still Her boiling tide's gyration, Ere my charmed spirit shall have power To tear itself away, In freedom, but for one short hour, From thy celestial sway. 5. Lions and tigers shall make peace With lambs, and play together, Sands shall be counted, and deep seas Grow dry in rainy weather, Ere Fortune shall the influence have To make my soul resign Its bliss, and call itself the slave Of any charms but thine. 6. For thou the magnet art, and I The needle, oh my beauty! And every hour thou draw'st me nigh, In voluntary duty; Nor is this wonderful, for call The proudest, she will feel That thou the mirror art of all The ladies in Castile.] CHAPTER III. FROM GARCILASSO TO THE ARGENSÓLAS. To Juan Boscán is generally attributed the introduction into Spanish poetry of endecasyllables, and Italian measures. Andreas Navagero, ambassador of Venice to the court of Spain, recommended to Boscán this novelty, which, begun by him, and followed by Garcilasso, Mendoza, Acuña, Cetina, and other fine spirits, effected an entire change in the art. Not that endecasyllabic verse was unknown in Castile before. There are some specimens of it in the _Conde Lucanór_, written in the fourteenth century; and the Marques de Santillana in the fifteenth, composed many sonnets in the mode of the Italians. But these essays had not obtained consequence, and it was only in the time of Boscán that the poets generally devoted themselves to this species of versification. And herein, if rightly I judge, the intimate relation that now subsisted between the two nations had more influence than the authority of a second-rate poet like Boscán; it is, notwithstanding, without dispute much to his glory to have been the author of so happy a revolution, and to have contributed by his example and his talents to its establishment.