45 Short Baroque Poems by the best authors

Throughout the centuries, humanity has used art such as lyric and poetry to express itself.

Emotions, feelings, thoughts and doubts are some of the main elements that poets have wanted to reflect. But poetry is not homogeneous: each poet expresses himself independently, although it is true that there are different currents and ways of doing, generally linked to the historical and cultural moment of the time in which the artist lives.

The Baroque: a time of great poets

One of these currents is the Baroque, known for tending towards extravagance, ornamentation, cultism and ostentation as well. of seeking to express sensations, passions and feelings despite doing so with a style where anguish and contradictions.

Aspects such as the spiritual are highly valued, as well as the use of satire and cynicism in more mundane matters. Great exponents of this era are Góngora or Quevedo. Throughout this article we are going to see a series of great Baroque poems, both from these and other authors, in order to be able to visualize their way of expressing themselves and some of the characteristics of this artistic style.

• Recommended article: "The 15 best short poems (by famous and anonymous authors)"

45 short poems from the Baroque

Below we show you a total of twenty-four great short poems from the Baroque of different exponents of this style, which tell us about aspects such as love, beauty or disappointment.

1. This is love, whoever tried it knows it (Lope de Vega)

“Faint, dare, be furious, harsh, tender, liberal, elusive, encouraged, mortal, deceased, alive, loyal, traitor, cowardly and courageous; not finding center and rest outside of good, showing oneself happy, sad, humble, haughty, angry, brave, fugitive, satisfied, offended, suspicious; flee the face of clear disappointment, drink poison for soft liquor, forget the benefit, love the harm; to believe that a heaven fits into a hell, to give one's life and soul to a disappointment; This is love, whoever tried it knows it.”

• In this poem, Lope de Vega briefly expresses the wide range of emotions and sensations that love generates, as well as the multiple contradictions that it can cause in ourselves.

2. To a dream (Luis de Góngora)

“Various imagination that, in a thousand attempts, despite your sad owner you spend the sweet ammunition of soft sleep, feeding vain thoughts, because you bring the spirits attentive only to represent me the serious frown of the sweetly Zahareño face (glorious suspension of my torments), the dream (author of representations), in his theater, on the armed wind, shadows usually dress in a beautiful package.

Follow him; will show you the beloved face, and your passions will deceive your passions for a while, two goods, which will be sleep and hair.”

• In this poem, Luis de Góngora tells us about the pleasure of dreaming and how this allows us to detach ourselves from the problems of everyday life, as well as being able to appreciate the beauty of the dream world.

3. Definition of love (Francisco de Quevedo)

“It is scorching ice, it is frozen fire, it is a wound that hurts and is not felt, it is a good dream, a present evil, it is a very tiring brief rest.

It is a carelessness that makes us care, a coward with a brave name, a lonely walk among people, a love only to be loved.

It is an imprisoned freedom, which lasts until the last paroxysm; disease that grows if cured. This is the child Love, this is the abyss of him. Look what friendship he will have with nothing who is contrary to himself in everything!

• Quevedo shows us in this poem a brief definition of love, the carousel of emotions that it generates and the contradictions and self-conflicts that it implies.

4. To the flowers (Pedro Calderón de la Barca)

“These who were pomp and joy waking up at dawn, in the afternoon will be vain pity sleeping in the arms of the cold night. This nuance that defies the sky, Iris striped of gold, snow and scarlet, will be a lesson to human life: so much is undertaken in the space of one day!

The roses rose early to bloom, and to grow old they bloomed: cradle and tomb in a bud they found. Such men saw their fortunes: in one day they were born and expired; that after centuries, hours were.”

• Brief poem by Calderón de la Barca tells us about flowers, but that starts from them and their fragility to talk about how ephemeral things are: everything is born and Everything dies, everything has its beginning and its end, including our ambitions, dreams, achievements and life.

5. Contains a happy fantasy with decent love (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)

“Stop, shadow of my elusive good, image of the spell that I love most, beautiful illusion for whom I happily die, sweet fiction for whom I live painfully.

If my chest of obedient steel serves as the attractive magnet of your graces, why do you make me fall in love with you flatteringly if you then have to mock me as a fugitive?

But you cannot blazon, satisfied, that your tyranny triumphs over me: that although you leave the bond mocked tight that your fantastic form girded, it matters little to mock your arms and chest, if my prison carves you out. fancy."

• This poetry by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, one of the exponents of the Baroque in Mexico and member of the Order of San Jerónimo, tells us about love. The author reflects to us that although we resist feeling it, experiencing it and the mere fact of fantasizing about it already generates joy and satisfaction.

6. Sonnet to a nose (Francisco de Quevedo)

“There was a man stuck to a nose, there was a superlative nose, there was a half-living alquitara, there was a poorly bearded swordfish; It was a sundial wrongly faced. There was an elephant on its back, there was a nose and a scribe, an Ovid Nason with a bad nose.

There was the spur of a galley, there was an Egyptian pyramid, the twelve tribes of noses were; Once upon a time there was an infinite nose, friesian arch-nose, caratulera, big-nosed chilblain, purple and fried.

There was a man stuck to a nose, there was a superlative nose; There was a nose and a scribe; There was a very bearded swordfish; It was a sundial misdirected. Once upon a time there was a pensive alquitara; There was an elephant face up; Ovidio Nasón was more talented.

Once upon a galley's spur; There was a pyramid of Egypt, the twelve tribes of noses were; "There was a very infinite nose, a lot of nose, a nose so fierce that on Annas' face it would be a crime."

• This highly known sonnet by Quevedo is one of the most popular burlesque poems of the Baroque.. In addition to this, it was a mockery dedicated to one of the author's greatest literary rivals: Luis de Góngora.

7. Ovillejos (Miguel de Cervantes)

“Who diminishes my property? Disdain! And who increases my duels? Jealousy! And who tests my patience? Absence! In this way, there is no remedy for my illness, since hope, disdain, jealousy and absence kill me.

Who causes me this pain? Love! And who replenishes my glory? Fortune! And who consents to my grief? Heaven! In this way I fear dying from this strange evil, since love, fortune and heaven combine in my harm.

Who will improve my luck? Death! And the good of love, who reaches it? Moving! And their ills, who cures them? Craziness! Thus it is not sensible to want to cure passion, when the remedies are death, change and madness.”

• Miguel de Cervantes is one of the greatest exponents of Spanish and universal literature. and he is especially known for being the author of “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha.” However, Cervantes also wrote poems like the one presented here, in this case to talk about the pain that lovesickness can generate.

8. To jealousy (Luis de Góngora)

“O fog of the most serene state, infernal fury, evil-born serpent! Oh poisonous viper hidden in a green meadow in a smelly bosom! Oh, among the nectar of mortal love, poison, that in a crystal glass you take life! Oh sword upon me with a hair grasp, of the loving spur hard brake! Oh zeal, of eternal executioner favor! Return to the sad place where you were, or to the kingdom (if you fit there) of fear; But you won't fit there, because since you've been eating so much of yourself and not finishing, you must be bigger than hell itself."

• This poem by Góngora makes clear reference to the suffering generated by the awakening of jealousy., as well as the mistrust and difficulty it causes in relationships.

9. I search for life in death (Miguel de Cervantes)

“I seek life in death, health in illness, freedom in prison, escape in the closed and loyalty in the traitor. But my luck, from whom I never expect any good, has established with heaven that, since I ask for the impossible, they have not yet given me the possible.”

• This short poem by Cervantes tells us about the search for impossible assumptions, of finding something desired in its direct opposites. It is a search for the impossible that can cause us to lose what is possible, and that is part of history. from Don Quixote de la Mancha: the poem is recited to Anselmo, a character who neglects and leaves aside his wife Camila.

10. Foolish men that you accuse (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)

“Foolish men who accuse women without reason, without seeing that you are the occasion of the same thing that you blame: if with unparalleled eagerness you solicit her disdain, why do you want them to do good if you incite her? evil?

You combat his resistance and then, gravely, say that it was lightness that caused the diligence. Seeming wants the boldness of your crazy seeming, the child who puts the coconut and then is afraid of it. You want, with foolish presumption, to find the one you seek, for intended, Thais, and in possession, Lucrecia.

What mood can be stranger than that which, lacking advice, he himself blurs the mirror, and he feels that it is not clear? With favor and disdain you have equal status, complaining if they treat you badly, mocking you if they love you well.

You are always so foolish that, with unequal standards, you blame one for being cruel and another for being easy to blame. So how should the one that your love seeks be tempered, if the one that is ungrateful offends, and the one that is easy angers? But, among the anger and sorrow that your taste refers to, there may well be those who do not love you and complain at a good time.

Your lovers give pain to their freedoms, and after making them bad you want to find them very good. What greater fault has had in a wrong passion: the one who falls because of prayer, or the one who prays because of fallen? Or which is more to blame, even if anyone does evil: the one who sins for the pay, or the one who pays to sin?

Well, why are you afraid of the guilt you have? Want them as you make them or make them as you seek them. Stop asking, and then, with even more reason, you will accuse the fans of whoever is going to ask you. Well with many weapons I found that fights your arrogance, because in promise and instance you join devil, flesh and world.

• This poetry is also by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, specifically one of the best known, and in it she tells us about the hypocrisy of those who demand certain characteristics from her spouse who in turn then criticize and discriminate, in addition to objectifying and treating the figure unequally. feminine. She speaks critically to us about positions of discrimination and humiliating and utilitarian treatment of women, a topic that is not so common to see criticized by 17th century authors.

11. The face I saw of my late wife (John Milton)

“I saw the face of my deceased wife, returned, like Alceste, from death, with which Hercules increased my luck, livid and rescued from the pit. Mine, unharmed, clean, splendid, pure and saved by the law so strong, and I contemplate her beautiful inert body like the one in the heaven where she rests.

She came to me all dressed in white, covering her face, and he was able to show me that in love and kindness she shone. How much shine, a reflection of her life! But alas! "That he leaned down to hug me and I woke up and saw the day come back in the night."

• This beautiful poem by Milton reflects longing and desire that the people who have died are still with us.

12. Night (Lope de Vega)

“Night that makes embellishments, crazy, imaginative, chimerical, that you show to those who in you conquer their good, the flat mountains and the dry seas; inhabitant of hollow brains, mechanic, philosopher, alchemist, vile concealer, sightless lynx, frightening of your own echoes; the shadow, the fear, the evil is attributed to you, solicitous, poet, sick, cold, hands of the brave and feet of the fugitive.

Whether he wakes or sleeps, half his life is yours; If I watch, I pay you with the day, and if I sleep, I don't feel what I live.”

• Poem by Lope de Vega inspired by the night, that part of the day so associated with mysticism, magic and dreams.

13. Pronounce with their names the troubles and miseries of life (Francisco de Quevedo)

“Life begins in tears and poop, then comes the moo, with mom and coconut, followed by smallpox, slime and mucus, and then comes the top and the rattle. As she grows, the friend and the coaxer, with her the crazy appetite attacks, as she rises to youth, everything is little, and then the intention sins into a scoundrel. He becomes a man, and he messes up everything, being single he continues to perendec, married he becomes a bad cuca. “Old man turns gray, wrinkles and dries up, death comes, everything bazookas, and what he leaves pays, and what he sins.”

• A work that tells us about the passage of time, about the evolution of man throughout the life cycle and in the different stages of life: birth, growth, adulthood and old age.

14. Sunrise (John Donne)

“Old busy fool, unruly sun, why do you call to us in this way, through windows and curtains? Should lovers follow your path? Go, insolent luminary, and rather rebuke slow schoolboys and sullen apprentices, announce to the courtier that the king is going out hunting, order the ants to guard the harvest; Love, which never changes, knows no seasons, hours, days or months, the rags of time.

Why do you judge your rays to be so strong and splendid? I could eclipse them in a single blink, because I can't stand without looking at her. If their eyes have not yet blinded you, look carefully and tell me, tomorrow when you return, if the Indies of gold and spices continue in their place, or here they lie with me. Ask about the kings whom you saw yesterday and you will know that they all lie here, in this bed.

She is all the kingdoms and I, all the princes, and outside of us nothing exists; princes imitate us. Compared with this, all honor is a remedy, all wealth, alchemy. You are, sun, half as happy as we are, after the world has contracted to such an extreme. Your age calls for rest, and since your duty is to warm the world, warming ourselves is enough. Shine for us, who will be in everything, this bed your center, your orbit these walls.”

• This work by John Donne tells us about love, criticizing the strength of the sun's rays for disturbing the contemplation of the beloved and declaring that when they are together only they exist, in a moment of happiness and completeness.

15. The Hours That Gentiles Composed (William Shakespeare)

“The hours that Gentiles composed such a vision to enchant the eyes, their tyrants will be when they destroy a beauty of supreme grace: because the tireless time, in grim winter, changes to the summer that in its bosom ruins; The sap freezes and the foliage scatters and the beauty withers among the snow.

If the summer essence were not left, in walls of liquid captive crystal, beauty and its fruit would die without leaving even the memory of its form. But the distilled flower, even in winter, loses its ornament and lives in perfume.”

• This poem, by the well-known playwright William Shakespeare, tells us about how the passage of time deteriorates our appearance and beauty on a physical level, although the most important thing, the essence, survives.

16. Eyes (Giambattista Marino)

“Eyes, if it is true that a wise man can subdue the clear light of the celestial rotations, why can't I possess you, luminous and beautiful, born in the sun, earthly stars? Happy astrology if I could, kissing one of your rays, tell you: “I no longer fear murderers and kings: if you, eyes, are already mine.”

• Giambattista Marino is probably the most relevant author of the Italian Baroque., counting in his work with exponents such as Adonis. From this the previously written poem fragment (translated) is extracted, in which it tells us about love and the importance we give to the eyes and gaze of the loved person.

17. Sonnet XIX to love (Jean de Sponde)

“One day I contemplated the water of this river that slowly drags its waves towards the sea, without the aquilons making it foam, nor jumping, destroying, to the shore it bathes. And contemplating the course of the evils that I have, this river, I told myself, does not know how to love; If a flame could light his ice, he would find love just as I have found it.

If it suited him well, he would have a greater torrent. Love is about pain, not so much about rest, but this pain, in the end, follows rest, if its firm spirit of dying defends it; But he who dies in sorrow deserves nothing but rest that never brings him back to life.”

• A representative of the French Baroque, Jean de Sponde In the translation of this sonnet he expresses to us his reflections on love when contemplating the flow of a river.

18. Prohibition (John Donne)

“Be careful not to love me, remember, at least, that I have forbidden it to you; It is not that I am going to make up for my immense waste of words and blood for your tears and sighs, being with you as you were for me; but as such enjoyment consumes our life that, unless your love is frustrated with my death; If you love me, be careful not to love me.

Beware of hating me, or of triumphing excessively in victory. It's not that I want to be my own authority, and return hate for hate; but you will lose your title of conqueror if I, your conquest, perish because of your hatred. So that, since I am nothing, my deaths do not diminish you; If you hate me, be careful not to hate me.

However, love me and hate me too, and then such extremes can be annulled. Love me, so that I may die in the sweetest way; hate me, because your love is excessive for me; or let them both wither, and not me; Thus, I, alive, will be your stage, not your triumph; So you destroy your love, your hate and myself, to let me live, oh, love me and hate me too.”

• According to Donne, the love-hate duality is a constant within the world of poetry, establishing a conflict between both extremes and the author of this poem seeking to counteract them.

19. When I'm dead, cry for me alone... (William Shakespeare)

“When I have died, cry for me only while you hear the sad bell, announcing to the world my escape from the vile world towards the infamous worm. And do not evoke, if you read this rhyme, the hand that writes it, because I love you so much that I would prefer even your oblivion to knowing that my memory bitters you.

But if you look at these verses when nothing separates me from the mud, don't even say my poor name and May your love with me wither, so that the wise man in your crying does not investigate and mock you for the absent."

• Another poem by Shakespeare, which focuses on the themes of love, death and longing: it expresses his desire that his own death does not cause suffering to the person he loves, to the point of preferring to be forgotten.

20. Sonnet II on Death (Jean de Sponde)

“We must die! And the proud life that defies death will feel its fury; The suns will raise their daily flowers and time will crack this empty blister. This torch that casts a smoky flame will quench its burning upon the green wax; The oil of this painting will whiten its colors, its waves will break on the foamy shore. I saw its clear lightning flashes pass before my eyes, and I even heard the thunder that rumbles in the heavens. From one side or another the storm will blow. I saw the snow melt, its torrents dry up, I later saw the roaring lions without rage. Live, men, live, for it is necessary to die.”

• The French author reflects in this poem on the fact that we all have to die sooner or later, and pushes us to live intensely for as long as we are going to do so.

21. Sonnet V (Tirso de Molina)

“I promised you my dear freedom, not to captivate you anymore, nor to give you grief; But a promise in another's power, how can it be obligatory to be fulfilled? Whoever promises not to love all his life, and on that occasion the will stops, dries up the water of the sea, adds its sand, stops the winds, measures the infinite.

Until now, with noble resistance, the feathers cut off light thoughts, no matter how much the occasion protects their flight. Pupil I am of love; Without their license they cannot force oaths on me. Forgive me, will, if I break them.”

• This sonnet, from the work “The Punishment of the Penqueque”, tells us about how the loss of love can lead to breaking the promises made to the loved one.

22. Tears of the homeland (Andreas Gryphius)

“Now we are more than destroyed; the numerous soldiery, the sounding trumpet, the sword full of blood, the thundering cannon; They have consumed everything that sweat and labor created. The towers burning, the church looted, the town hall in ruins, the strong men torn to pieces, the young women raped and all we see is fire, plague and death that pierce soul and heart.

Here, bastion and city always flooded with blood, for three times six years the streams filled with the dead that they slowly dragged away. And I am not talking about what is worse than death, worse than plague, fire and famine, because so many people lost the treasure of their soul.”

• The German Baroque also has various relevant authors, among whom is Andreas Gryphius. In this poem the author expresses his pain for the horrors of war (Germany was in the middle of the Thirty Years' War).

23. To the stars (Pedro Calderón de la Barca)

“Those features of light, those sparks that collect with superior feints food from the sun in radiance, those live, if they hurt. Nocturnal flowers are; Although so beautiful, they suffer their ardor ephemerally; For if one day is the century of flowers, one night is the age of the stars.

From that, then, fugitive spring, now our evil, now our good is inferred; record is ours, whether the sun dies or lives. How long will it be that man waits, or what change will there be that he does not receive from the star that is born and dies every night?

• This poem is a short sonnet dedicated to the stars, which remain practically unchanged and accompany us every night of our lives.

24. I am dying of love (Lope de Vega)

“I am dying of love, which I did not know, although skilled in loving things from the ground, that I did not think that love from heaven with such rigor ignited souls. If moral philosophy calls the desire for beauty love, I fear that with greater anxiety I will wake up the higher my beauty is.

I loved in the vile land, what a foolish lover! Oh light of the soul, having to look for you, what time I wasted as an ignorant person! But I promise you now to repay you with a thousand centuries of love for any moment that because of loving me I stopped loving you.”

• In this poem, Lope de Vega expresses the intense sensations and desire of being loved by the person he loves.

25. Warning to a minister (Francisco de Quevedo)

“You, now, oh minister!, affirm your care not to insult the poor and the strong; When you take gold and silver from him, he notices that you leave the iron polished. You leave sword and spear to the unfortunate, and power and reason to defeat you; Fasting people do not know how to fear death; weapons are left to the people stripped.

He who sees his certain perdition hates the cause of it more than his perdition; and this one, not that one, is more what infuriates him. "She arms her nakedness and her quarrel with desperation, when she offers him revenge for the rigor who runs over him."

• Baroque poetry is also represented in the field of political criticism.. In this poem, Quevedo establishes a warning to those in power not to take advantage and harass the people over whom they rule, or else he will be giving them reasons to overthrow him.

26. Sonnet XXXI (Francisco de Medrano)

“The flame burns, and in the dark and cold night the festive fire conquers, and all the noise and fire horror that was already in Lepanto serves the brief taste of a day. Only one you attend to it, my soul, with unaltered pleasure and fear, being in such new light and fire both common admiration and joy.

It burns, who doubts? In your noblest part, the fiercest flame and the most brilliant. What can make you happy or admire you? Thus, when the sun is present, there is no beautiful or great light; Thus no brave brush, presenting the truth, appears daring.”

• Francisco de Medrano, a classic author within the Baroque, shows us in this poem a beautiful reference to the dawn and its beauty.

27. To Itálica (Francisco de Rioja)

“These, from the age, gray ruins, which appear in unequal points, were an amphitheater, and are only signs of their divine factories. Oh, to what a miserable end, time, you destine works that seem immortal to us! And I fear, and I do not presume, that you direct my evils to the same death. To this clay, which flame hardened, and white moistened dust bound, how much human numbers admired and trodden! And now the faust and the flattering pomp of sorrow so illustrious and rare.”

• This poem by Francisco de Rioja, whose title tells us about the ruins of the city of Itálica (in present-day Seville), tells us about the passage of time and how everything (even what we consider unalterable) ends up disappearing as it passes.

28. He is so glorious and high in thought (Iván de Tarsis/Count of Villamediana)

“The thought that keeps me alive and causes death is so glorious and high that I do not know the style or means with which I can successfully declare the evil and good that I feel. You say it, love, who knows my torment, and devises a new way to reconcile these various extremes of my fate that alleviate the feeling with its cause; in which pain, if the sacrifice of the purest faith that is burning on the wings of the respect, love bears, if it fears fortune, that among mysteries of a secret love to love is strength and to wait craziness."

• The Count of Villamediana tells us about love as a powerful force that gives impetus to life but at the same time torments the one it loves with doubts and suffering.

29. Description of perfect beauty (Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau)

“A hair that recklessly avoids Berenice, a mouth that displays roses, full of pearls, a tongue that poisons a thousand hearts, two breasts, where the alabaster ruby ​​would plot. A neck that surpasses the swan in everything, two cheeks, where the majesty of Flora stirs, a look that knocks down men, that summons lightning bolts, two arms, whose strength they have executed on the lion.

A heart, from which nothing but my ruin flows, a voice, so heavenly that my condemnation sentences, two hands, whose resentment sends me into exile, and with sweet poison it envelops the very soul. An ornament, so it seems, in Paradise created, has deprived me of all ingenuity and freedom.”

• Another of the best-known German poets, this author expresses in the poem what he considers the perfect beauty of the woman he venerates.

30. Verses of love, scattered concepts (Lope de Vega)

“Verses of love, scattered concepts, engendered by the soul in my cares; Births of my burned senses, with more pain than freedom born; foundlings to the world, in which, lost, so broken and changed, that only where you were begotten were you known by blood; since you steal the labyrinth from Crete, from Daedalus the high thoughts, the fury from the sea, the flames from the abyss, If that beautiful asp does not accept you, leave the earth, entertain the winds: you will rest in your center same."

• This poem by Lope de Vega tells us how the force of love can inspire great works of art. and to develop our maximum potential.

31. Of wax are the wings whose flight (Iván de Tarsis / Count of Villamediana)

“The wings are made of wax, the flight of which recklessly governs the will, and carried away by its own madness with vain presumption, they ascend to the sky. The punishment is no longer there, nor the suspicion would be effective, nor do I know what I trust, if my man's fate is promised to the sea as a lesson to the ground.

But if you equal sorrow, love, pleasure, with that never-before-seen daring that is enough to prove the most lost, let the sun melt the daring wings, that the thought will not be able to remove the glory, by falling, if uploaded."

• The poem tells us about love as a challenge that can make us crash and suffer, but despite the suffering it causes, it is undoubtedly worth it.

32. Life is a dream (Calderón de la Barca)

“It is true, then: let us repress this fierce condition, this fury, this ambition, in case we ever dream. And yes we will, because we are in such a unique world that living is only dreaming; and experience teaches me that the man who lives dreams of what he is, until he wakes up.

The king dreams that he is king, and he lives with this deception, commanding, arranging and governing; and this applause, which he receives borrowed, he writes in the wind and death turns him into ashes (strong misfortune!): there are those who try to reign seeing that he has to wake up in the sleep of death! The rich man dreams of his wealth, which offers him more care; The poor man who suffers his misery and his poverty dreams; He who begins to thrive dreams, he who strives and aims dreams, he who wrongs and offends dreams, and in the world, in conclusion, everyone dreams of what they are, although no one understands it.

I dream that I am here, loaded from these prisons; and I dreamed that I saw myself in another, more flattering state. What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction, and the greatest good is small; that all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams.”

• A classic by Calderón de la Barca, Life is a Dream is actually a play in which we can find great examples of philosophical poems like the one here presented. This well-known poem tells us that everything in life is a dream, and that dreaming is what marks who we are.

33. Which is better, love or hate (Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)

“To the ungrateful one who leaves me, I look for a lover; I leave the lover who follows me ungrateful; I constantly adore the one my love mistreats, I mistreat the one my love constantly seeks. To the one I treat with love, I find a diamond, and I am a diamond to the one who treats me with love, triumphant I want to see the one who kills me and I kill the one who wants to see me triumphant.

If this payment, my desire suffers; If I pray to him, my honor is angry; In both ways I look unhappy. But I, for the best match, choose; of whom I do not want, to be violently employed; that, from those who do not love me, a vile dispossession.”

• A short poem by this great poetess, in which he tells us about the contradiction that desire can lead us to with respect to the treatment they offer us: rejecting the one who loves us and looking for the one who despises us.

34. Sonnet XV (Gutierre de Cetina)

“Fire burn my flesh and by incense let the smoke descend to the souls of hell; let mine pass that eternal oblivion of Lethe because she loses the good that I think; The fierce ardor that now burns me intensely neither damages my heart nor makes it tender; deny me mercy, favor, rule the world, Love and the supreme immense God; my life is annoying and labored, in a narrow, hard and forced prison, always desperate for freedom, if As long as I live, I no longer hope to see anything - said Vandalio, and with truth - that is like you, Amarílida, beautiful."

• Love may be hard, but it is without a doubt one of the most powerful forces that exist.. Regardless of the difficulties, the loved one makes everything worth it.

35. The Broken Heart (John Donne)

“He who claims to have been in love for an hour is absolutely crazy, but it is not that love suddenly diminishes, but rather that it can devour ten in less time. Who will believe me if I swear that I have suffered from this plague for a year? Who wouldn't laugh at me if I said that I saw gunpowder in a flask burn all day? Oh, how insignificant the heart, if it falls into the hands of love! Any other sorrow leaves room for other sorrows, and claims only part of it for itself.

They come to us, but Love drags us, and, without chewing, swallows. By him, as by a chain bullet, entire troops die. He is the tyrant sturgeon; our hearts, the trash. If not, what happened to my heart when I saw you? I brought a heart to the room, but I came out without one. If I had gone with you, I know that mine would have taught your heart to show more compassion for me. But, alas, Love, with a strong blow he broke it like glass.

But nothing can become nothing, nor can any place be completely emptied, so, then, I think that my chest still possesses all those fragments, even if they are not reunited. And now, as broken mirrors show hundreds of smaller faces, so the pieces of my heart can feel pleasure, desire, adoration, but after such love, they cannot love again.”

• In this poem the author tells us about the pain that causes your heart to be broken. and how difficult it is to get rid of it, as well as recover the desire to fall in love again.

36. For being with you (Giambattista Marino)

"What enemies will there be now who will not suddenly turn into cold marble, if they look, sir, at that shield of yours?" proud Gorgon so cruel, with hair horribly turned into a mass of vipers, making her squalid and terrifying pomp? More than! Among the weapons, the formidable monster barely gives you an advantage: since the true Medusa is your value.”

• This poem is based on Caravaggio's painting “The Head of Medusa in a Shield.”, making a brief description of the myth of the death of Medusa while dedicating the poem to it seeks to honor the Grand Duke Ferdinand I of Tuscany, in an example of courtly poetry that seeks to praise his worth.

37. Let me stay warm, and let people laugh (Luis de Góngora)

“Let me be hot and let people laugh. Let others discuss the government of the world and its monarchies, while butter and soft bread rule my days, and winter mornings orangeade and brandy, and people laugh. Let the prince eat a thousand cares on golden dishes, like golden pills; That on my poor table I want more a blood sausage that bursts on the grill and makes people laugh. When January covers the mountains with white snow, I will have the brazier filled with acorns and chestnuts, and let the sweet lies of the angry King tell me, and the people laugh.

Look for the Nuevo Soles merchant at a good time; I shells and snails among the fine sand, listening to Filomena on the poplar tree of the fountain, and the people laugh. The sea passes at midnight, and Leandro burns in loving flame to see his Lady; That I most want to cross the white or red current from the gulf of my winery, and let people laugh. "Well, Love is so cruel that he makes a sword out of Pyramus and his beloved, so that she and he come together, let my Thisbe be a cake, and the sword be my tooth, and let the people laugh."

• One of Góngora's best-known poems, it is a satirical work in which the author tells us about the wish that once he has died, the world continues to spin and be happy, this being a comforting fact for those who will not be there.

38. Ode X (Manuel de Villegas)

“I thought, beautiful lights, to reach your light with my hope; but inconstant Lida, for doubling my quarrels, from your (oh dear!) exalted summit arrogantly threw her down; and now perjury seeks to cut down the tree of my faith. Like an indignant deer, which with a sudden breath decomposes the harvest in the field, and in the joyful meadow the tall elms that age composes, thus, with harsh viciousness, Lida ungrateful and perjures cut the tree of my faith try.

He swore that he would be as firm in loving me as a rock or as a free-standing oak, and that this stream that these beech trees touch before the oath would return; but perjury already seeks to cut down the tree of my faith. This will be said by the winds that gave their ears their oath; This will be said by the rivers, who by being attentive to the whisper stopped their complaints; but my cries will say that perjury seeks to cut down the tree of my faith.”

• This poem is by Manuel de Villegas, a famous Spanish poet with extensive knowledge of Greek mythology and history, tells us about broken hopes and dreams, about unfulfilled promises.

39. Sonnet XXII (Gutierre de Cetina)

“Joyful hours that fly by because, with the return of good, greater evil occurs; tasty night that, in such a sweet affront, the sad farewell you show me; importunate clock that, hastening your course, my pain represents me; stars, with whom I never had an account, that my departure is accelerating; rooster that you have denounced my sorrow, star that my light is darkening, and you, poorly calm and young dawn, yes The pain of my care is in you, go little by little, stopping your step, if it cannot be more, even for an hour.”

• In this poem we see how the author becomes distressed thinking that although he is happy now, in the future the moment of happiness will end up passing and pain and suffering will end up appearing, in a devastated and hopeless attitude typical of the Baroque.

40. The last time I can close my eyes (Francisco de Quevedo)

“My eyes will be able to close the last shadow that the white day will take me, and this soul of mine will now be able to unleash its anxious flattery desire; but no, on that other side, on the shore, he will leave the memory, where he burned: my flame knows how to swim in cold water, and lose respect for the severe law.

Soul to whom a prison god has been, veins that have given humor to so much fire, marrows that have gloriously burned his body, not his care; They will be ashes, but they will have meaning; dust they will be, more dust in love.”

• On this occasion, Quevedo expresses a love so strong that will even last beyond death: it is an eternal love.

41. Sonnet XXIX (Francisco de Medrano)

“Man alone among so many animals, Leonardo, was born to tears; He alone is bound on the day he is born, unarmed, without defense or feet against evil. This is how life begins: at its threshold offering anticipated tears, not then for any other sin than that of being born to such miseries.

To him was given an insatiable thirst for life; He alone takes care of the grave, and in his soul a sea of ​​longing and affection rages, for which some said: "He is not a natural mother, but a hated stepmother." See if you heard a more discreet error.”

• In this work, Medrano expresses the fear of the defenselessness of human beings. in the face of nature, as well as the fact that it has actually endowed us with great gifts that we often do not know how to value.

42. Expiration of beauty (Christian Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau)

“With his hand death will pass frozen, its paleness at the end, Lesbia, for your breasts, will be the soft coral pale lips undone, on the shoulder cold sand the snow today inflamed. From the eyes the sweet ray and the vigor of your hand, which conquer along with it, time will conquer, and the hair, today golden with brilliance, will be a common cord, which age will cut.

The well-planted foot, the graceful posture will be partly dust, partly null, nothing; The numen of your brilliance will no longer have an offerer. This and even more than this has finally succumbed, only your heart can always survive, because nature has made it of diamond.”

• In this poem the German author expresses to us how beauty is something that time ends up withering., while the heart, soul and our being is the only thing that will remain.

43. Sonnet IV (Francisco de Medrano)

“It pleases me to see the sea when it is angry, and accumulates mountains of water, and the expert skipper (who prudently conceals his fear) put in anguish. It also pleases me to see him when he wets the Malawi shore, and in milk he flatters whoever his faults, or his gluttony, lead him to court any red cap.

Turbid pleases me, and serene pleases me; to see him safe, I say, from the outside, and to see this one fearful, and this one deceived: not because I take pleasure in the evil of others, but because I find myself free on the shore, and quite disillusioned from the false sea.

• This sonnet by Medrano is a poem dedicated to sensations that generated him the contemplation of the beach of Barcelona, ​​on his way from Rome to Spain.

44. About the portrait of Schidoni's hand (Giambattista Marino)

“Take the ice and the shine, they are only with every fear of brown shadow powers; also from the paleness of death, provided that you can do this, to the strange mixture; Take what you rescue from the darkness on the black trail, in the pain and the darkness weave the bitterness dear, the never wished luck, the misery of unfinished nature;

Syringe venom from selected snakes mixes and adds to the colors of the sighs and the many worries. Then it is done, Schidoni, the truth and not the lie is my portrait. But this should live, so you cannot give it liveliness.”

• Another work of the great Italian poet, which in this case expresses the feelings generated by the appreciation of the creation of a work of art.

45. Love and loathing (Juan Ruiz de Alarcón)

“My beautiful owner, for whom I weep without fruit, because the more I adore you, the more I distrust of overcoming the elusiveness that tries to compete with beauty! The natural habit in you seems changed: what pleases everyone makes you sad; Prayer makes you angry, love freezes you, crying hardens you.

Beauty makes you divine - I am not unaware of it, because as a deity I adore you -; But what reason dictates that such perfections break their natural statutes? If I have been so tenderly in love with your beauty, if I consider myself despised and want to be hated, what law does it suffer, or what jurisdiction, that you hate me because I love you?

• This Mexican author tells us about unrequited love towards a person who despises the feelings one has towards them, as well as the pain and suffering that this contempt generates.