In which are images more delicate and appropriate, or more naturally expressed, than these? Sleep, for your winged Lord in guardianship Keeps watch, the finger on his serious lip. Lovers! touch not, if life you love, the chaste Sweet smiling mouth that wooes you to its taste! For 'twixt its two red lips armed Love reposes, Close as a poisonous snake 'twixt two ripe roses. * * * * * Each wind that breathes, gallantly here and there Waves the fine gold of her disordered hair, As a green poplar-leaf in wanton play Dances for joy at rosy break of day. There is not in all Anacreon a thought so graceful as that of the song, wherein, presenting some flowers to his lady, he begs from her as many kisses as he had received stings from the bees that guarded them. "From my summer alcove, which the stars this morn With lucid pearls o'erspread, I have gathered these jessamines, thus to adorn With a wreath thy graceful head. From thy bosom and mouth they, as flowers, ere death, Ask a purer white and a sweeter breath. Their blossoms a host of bees, alarmed, Watched over on jealous wing; Hoarse trumpeters seemed they all, and armed Each bee with a diamond sting: I tore them away, but each flower I tore Has cost me a wound which smarteth sore. Now as I these jessamine flowers entwine, A gift for thy vagrant hair, I must have, from those honey-sweet lips of thine, A kiss for each sting I bear: It is just that the blooms I bring thee home, Be repaid by sweets from the golden comb." If from Italian measures we pass to Letrillas and the Castilian Romance, Góngora will be found king of that class, which has received from no one so much grace, so many splendours, and so much poetry. His merit indeed, in this department, is so great, and specimens of his success in it are so common, that there remains no other difficulty to prove it than that of choice. This fragment will suffice for our purpose.