The 11 most inspiring poems by Garcilaso de la Vega
A selection of the most memorable verses of this Spanish poet of recognized artistic talent.
Garcilaso de la Vega is known for being one of the most important poets of the Spanish poetry.Garcilaso de la Vega is considered one of the most important poets of the Golden Age and one of the greatest writers in history.
This writer and military man of Toledo origin, probably born in 1501 (although the specific year of his birth is uncertain, he could also have been born in 1498) and died in 1536, is known for being the pioneer in introducing Renaissance poetry and hendecasyllabic verses (of eleven syllables) in our country, as well as for using in his works an intimate, musical and emotionally expressive tone that tended to avoid the pomposity typical of previous eras.
Despite its great importance, the work of this author was relatively short and would not be published until years after his death: it consists of about forty sonnets, three eclogues, an epistle, two elegies and five songs. All of them of great beauty and love being one of its main themes. In order to be able to admire his work, throughout this article we are going to expose some of the best known poems of some of the best known poems of Garcilaso de la Vega..
A short selection of poems by Garcilaso de la Vega
Below we offer you a series of examples of Garcilaso de la Vega's poetry, all of them part of his sonnets and mostly focused on aspects such as love and melancholy.
His main source of inspiration was probably his feelings for Isabel Freyre.who would become his platonic love and whose marriage to another man and later his death (something that explains the despair and melancholy that expresses much of the author's work), as well as friendship.
Sonnet 1
When I stop to contemplate my 'stado
and to see the steps where I have been brought,
I find, according to where I was lost,
that I could have come to greater evil;
But when I have forgotten the way,
I do not know where I have come to so much evil;
I know that I have come to an end, and the more I have felt
to see my care come to an end.
I will end, that I gave myself up without art
to the one who will know how to lose me and end me
if he will, and he will even know how to want it;
for since my will can kill me,
his will, which is not so much on my part,
what can he do but do it?
-
This first sonnet refers to the observation of our past, looking back and valuing what we have achieved in life and where we have arrived, as well as the sadness generated by an unrequited love. the sadness generated by an unrequited love..
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Sonnet V
Your gesture is written in my soul,
and all that I wish to write about you;
you alone have written it, I read it
so alone, that even of you I keep myself in this.
In this I am, and will always be;
Although there is no room in me for what I see in you,
I believe in so much good that I do not understand,
I already take faith as my presupposition.
I was born only to love you;
My soul has cut you to its own measure;
By habit of the soul itself I love you.
When I have I confess I owe you;
For you I was born, for you I have life,
For you I must die, and for you I die.
*This fifth sonnet of Garcilaso expresses his sensations and feelings at seeing his sensations and feelings when he sees the loved oneThe energy and the desire to be with her that she generates and the memory of each of her gestures.
Sonnet XXVI
The foundation that my weary life
that my weary life sustained.
Oh how much good is finished in just one day!
Oh how many hopes the wind carries!
Oh how idle is my thought
When it occupies itself with my good!
My hope, as well as my vain hope
A thousand times my torment punishes it.
Most times I give myself up, others I resist
with such fury, with a new strength,
that a mountain set upon it would break.
This is the desire that drives me,
That I wish to see again one day
whom it would be better never to have seen.
- In this sonnet we notice the pain caused by a love that has not been and will never be again, as well as the suffering generated in the author by the death of his platonic love, Isabel Freyre.
4. Sonnet XXXVIII
I am continually bathed in tears,
always breaking the air with suspires,
and it hurts me even more not to dare to tell you
that I have come to such a state because of you;
that seeing me where I am and in what I have gone
by the narrow way of following you,
if I want to turn to flee from you,
I faint, seeing behind me what I have left behind;
And if I want to climb to the high summit,
I am frightened at every step on the way.
sad examples of those who have fallen;
Above all, I lack the light of hope
of hope, with which I used to walk
through the dark region of your oblivion.
- In this poem Garcilaso speaks to us about a problem that still exists in many people today: the people today: the struggle between loving and wanting to stop loving someone who does not correspond to us.
5. Sonnet XXVIII
Boscan, you are avenged, with my loss,
of my past rigor and my harshness
with which I used to reproach you for the tenderness
of your soft heart I used to.
Now I punish myself every day
of such savagery and such clumsiness:
but it is in time that from my baseness
and punish me well I could run and punish myself.
Know that in my perfect age and armed,
with my eyes open I have surrendered
To the child you know, blind and naked.
Of such a beautiful fire consumed
was never a heart: if asked
I am the rest, in the rest I am mute.
- In this poem the author refers to the fact of having reproached a friend for something that the same author is doing now: being carried away by passion and love for someone.
6. Sonnet XXIX
Passing the sea Leandro the spirited,
in loving fire all burning,
he strengthened the wind, and was embracing
the water with a furious impetus.
*Overcome with hasty toil,
to contrast to the waves not being able,
and more of the good he was losing there by dying
than of his own life, anguished,
as best he could, he strengthened his weary voice
and to the waves he spoke in this way,
but his voice was never heard from them:
"Waves, for there is no excuse for me to die,
let me come there, and when I return
your fury will be executed in my life".
- The author refers to the Greek myth of Leander and Heroin which two young lovers who each lived on one side of the Dardanelles or Hellespont strait and separated by the opposition of their families met every night, Hero leaving a light on in the tower where she lived so that Leander could swim across the strait in order to be together. One night the wind extinguished the light that guided Leandro, and Leandro got lost and drowned and Hero committed suicide when she learned of the end of her beloved.
7. Sonnet XXXI
Within my soul there was engendered in me
a sweet love, and of my feeling
as approved was its birth
as of a single desired son;
but then of him was born who has
of the whole loving thought;
in harsh rigor and in great torment
the first delights has returned.
O crude grandson, who gives life to the father
and kill your grandfather, why do you grow up so displeased
to him of whom thou wast born?
O jealous fear, to whom dost thou seem?
that even invidiousness, your own fierce mother,
is frightened to see the monster she has given birth to.
- Garcilaso speaks to us here of jealousyand how it is capable of transforming and destroying the very love that allowed its birth.
8. Sonnet XXIII
While of rose and of lily
the color is shown in your gesture,
and that your ardent, honest gaze,
with clear light the tempest serene;
And while your hair, which in the vein of gold
of the gold is chosen, with swift flight
the beautiful white neck, upraised,
the wind moves, scatters and disarranges:
Take from your joyful spring
the sweet fruit before the angry weather
Cover the fair summit with snow.
The icy wind will wither the rose,
The light age will change everything
for not changing its custom.
- The poetry reflected here speaks to us of the beauty of youth, as well as urging us to seize the moment. before time passes and the youthfulness fades away..
9. Sonnet IV
For a while my hope rises,
but tired of having risen,
it falls down again, leaving my degree of mistrust free,
free to mistrust.
Who will suffer such a harsh change
from good to evil? O weary heart
strive in the misery of your state,
that after fortune there is usually good!
I myself will undertake by force of arms
To break a mountain that another would not break,
Of a thousand inconveniences very thick;
death, imprisonment cannot, nor embarrassment,
to go to see you as I wish,
naked spirit or man in flesh and blood.
- This sonnet is one of the few in which no reference is made to the figure of the beloved. In this case Garcilaso speaks of his stay in prison, in Tolosa, after having gone to the weddingafter attending his nephew's wedding. This wedding did not have the permission of the emperor Carlos I, who ordered the imprisonment of the poet and soldier.
10. Sonnet VIII
From that good and excellent sight
come forth living and burning spirits,
and being received by my eyes,
they pass me to where evil is felt.
They enter the road easily,
with mine, moved by such heat,
they go out of me as if lost,
called by that good that is present.
Absent, in memory I imagine her;
my spirtus, thinking they saw her,
move and flame without measure;
but not finding the way easy,
that her own, entering, melted,
they burst to go out where there is no exit.
- In this sonnet we are presented with a situation in which the author and the loved one look into each other's eyes, establishing a profound and even spiritual act of communication.. We observe the sensations generated by the gaze of the loved one, as well as the melancholy provoked by his memory.
11. If at your will I am made of wax
If at your will I am waxen,
and for sunshine I have only your sight,
which does not inflame or conquer with its gaze
with his gaze, is of no sense;
From whence comes a thing, which, if it were
less often tried and seen by me,
as it seems that reason resists,
I would not believe my own sense?
And it is that I am from afar inflamed
of your ardent sight and inflamed
so much so, that in life I can scarcely sustain myself;
but if from near I am attacked
by your eyes, then I feel my Blood curdle
my blood curdle in my veins.
- One of his most intimate poems.
- Morros, B.(ed.). (2007). Garcilaso de la Vega: Poetic work and prose texts. Editorial Crítica.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)