Luis de Góngora

The hours will hardly forgive you, those hours that are wearing away the days, those days that are gnawing away the years.

Luis de Góngora y Argote (July 11, 1561 – May 24, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and playwright.

Sourced

• Más largo
  que una noche de Diciembre
  para un hombre mal casado.
  • Longer than a winter's night for a man who is ill-wed.
  • "Murmuraban los rocines", line 94, cited from Poesias de D. Luis de Gongora y Argote (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1820) p. 83. Translation from Henry Baerlein The House of the Fighting-cocks (London: Leonard Parsons, 1922) p. 92.

• La vida es ciervo herido,
  que las flechas le dan alas.
  • Life is a wounded stag in whom the fast-stuck arrows function as wings.
  • "¡Oh cuán bien que acusa Alcino!", line 23; cited from Poesias de D. Luis de Gongora y Argote (Madrid: Imprenta Nacional, 1820) p. 74. Translation from Ronald M. Macandrew Naturalism in Spanish Poetry from the Origins to 1900 (Aberdeen: Milne and Hutchinson, 1931) p. 75.

• Mal te perdonarán a ti las horas;
  las horas que limando están los días,
  los días que royendo están los años.
  • The hours will hardly forgive you, those hours that are wearing away the days, those days that are gnawing away the years.
  • "De la brevedad engañosa de la vida", line 12, cited from J. M. Cohen (ed.) The Penguin Book of Spanish Verse (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962) p. 278. Translation from the same source.

• A batallas de amor, campo de pluma.
  • Feathers are Love's most fitting battle-ground.
  • Las Soledades, Soledad 1, line 1091, cited from Gilbert F. Cunningham (trans.) The Solitudes of Luis de Góngora (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968) p. 76. Translation from the same source, p. 77.

• Andeme yo caliente
  y ríase la gente.
  • Let me go warm and merry still;
    And let the world laugh, an' it will.
  • Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 1, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 115. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

• Busque muy en hora buena
  el mercader nuevos soles;
  yo conchas y caracoles
  entre la menuda arena,
  escuchando a Filomena
  sobre el chopo de la fuente.
  • Let merchants traverse seas and lands,
    For silver mines and golden sands;
    Whilst I beside some shadowy rill,
    Just where its bubbling fountain swells,
    Do sit and gather stones and shells,
    And hear the tale the blackbird tells.
  • Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 24, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 116. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

External links

• Góngora at Spanish Wikisource