have won national renown for their eloquence, as well as purity of diction, is quite large.[1]
Spanish poetry is strongly national, despite the successive influence of Italian and French schools. The language is remarkably suitable for versification, notably in forming rhyme, not only consonantal, but alliterative and assonantal. While the ballad has ever retained its hold on popular taste, sonnets were even more frequent in Mexico than in Spain. Epigrammatic verse is common, though inclining to erotic sentiment.
The first attempts at describing the events of the conquest were merely rhyming chronicles.[2] Among descriptive poems must be mentioned Grandeza de México, by Bishop Balbuena, who earned bright fame in his Bernardo and his pastoral Siglo del Oro, both among the finest of their class in the language. Two other subjects engaged the ambitious; namely, the passion of Christ, and the miracle of the virgin of Guadalupe.[3]
Among the authors of shorter poems, odes, sonnets, elegies, satires, and epigrams, deserves special mention Francisco de Terrazas, who figured in 1574, and was honored with praise by Cervantes. Zapata's elegy on the death of the brothers Avila was noticeable for many sweet lines. Church festivals, public inaugurations, celebrations connected with the royal family or prominent citizens, and reunions, gave occasion for displays on this field.
Before closing my remarks on the poetry of colonial
- ↑ There is a bulky manuscript in my Library, Discurso Critico sobre la Oratoria Española y Americana of the last century, in which the author seeks to analyze the elements of the art and the proficiency exhibited by different nations, notably the Spaniards, on both continents. He is full of learned references, but also of cumbrous quotations, and wanders sadly from his subject, so that but little is gained by the reader.
- ↑ Such as El Peregrino Indiano by Saavedra y Guzman, Hernandia by Ruiz de Leon. A cruder effort were the quatrains of the Zapotec Antonio Lopez, which in MS. are on my shelves. In the same style is the Conquista de Galicia, by the Dominican Francisco Parra.
- ↑ La Primavera Indiana, by Sigüenza, full of puerilities and extravagance, and others equally foolish. Poema Sacra de la Pasion, by Antonio de Oviedo Herrera, is far superior.
