The 23 most famous poems of Lope de Vega (and their meaning)

Lope Félix de Vega Carpio, better known as Lope de Vega, is considered one of the most recognized and admired poets and playwrights of the well-known Spanish Golden Age, which reached a wide international reception thanks to his works. He was known for expressing his passion for literature and poetry at every possible moment, as well as for capturing his personal experiences in his verses. And with this selection of the best poems by him, we intend to pay tribute to his figure.

• We recommend you read: "25 great poems by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer"

Best poems by Lope de Vega

Next we bring the most famous poems of Lope de Vega and the meaning behind his verses.

1. Go and stay

Go and stay, and with staying, leave,

leave without a soul, and go with someone else's soul,

hear the sweet voice of a siren

and not being able to detach from the tree;

burn like the candle and waste away,

making towers on tender sand;

fall from a sky, and be a demon in pain,

and if it is, never regret it;

speak among the silent solitudes,

borrow on faith patience,

and what is temporary to call eternal;

believe suspicions and deny truths,

is what they call absence in the world,

fire in the soul, and hell in life.

• This poem tells us about an intense love that is ephemeral. Which puts us between a rock and a hard place. Between staying or leaving.

2. To a lady who went out a mess one morning

Beautiful mess, in whom she trusts

how much later it burns and falls in love,

which usually dawns troubled aurora,

to kill the sun at noon.

Suleiman natural, who distrusts

the radiance with which the skies gild;

leave the chest, do not touch, lady,

touch your aunt's old age.

The jasmine looks better, the rose better

through the messy hair in the snow

ivory column, beautiful throat.

For the night you are better touched;

that you will not get dark so sweet

as today you wake up disheveled.

• Stay with a person who finds you beautiful during the day, carefree and not just when you are groomed.

3. To the most holy Magdalene

LXVIII

I was looking for Madalena sinful

a man, and God found his feet, and in them

sorry, what more faith than hair

ties his feet, his eyes fall in love.

From his death to his life he gets better,

effect on Christ of his beautiful eyes,

follow its light, and to the west of them

he sings in the heavens and on rocks he cries.

"If you loved, said Christ, I am so soft

that with love who he loved I conquer,

if you loved, Madalena, she lives loving ».

Discreet lover, that the danger seen

she suddenly moved crying

the loves of the world to those of Christ.

• One of the poems in her series of religious verses. In this he recounts the passion of Mary Magdalene with Christ.

4. Night

Charm-making night,

crazy, imaginative, chimerist,

that you show the one who conquers her good in you,

the flat mountains and dry seas;

dweller of hollow brains,

mechanic, philosopher, alchemist,

vile concealer, sightless lynx,

frightening of your own echoes;

the shadow, the fear, the evil attributed to you,

caring, poet, sick, cold,

hands of the brave and feet of the fugitive.

Let him watch or sleep, half a life is yours;

if I see it, I pay you with the day,

and if I sleep, I don't feel what I live.

• There is something so mysterious and mystical about the night that it can enchant many. As this poem relates.

5. To a skull of a woman

This head, when alive, had

about the architecture of these bones

flesh and hair, for whom they were imprisoned

her eyes that looking at her she stopped.

Here the rose of her mouth was,

she withers already with such icy kisses;

here the eyes, of emerald printed,

color that so many souls entertained;

Here the estimate, in whom she had

the beginning of all movement;

here of the powers the harmony.

O mortal beauty, kite in the wind!

Where so much presumption lived

they despise the chamber worms.

• Verses that tell us a person who was and is no longer. Imagining how it could be even if you never have the security of that illusion.

6. The cunning babe

A very foxy wolf next to a farmhouse

a girl has been found

and so she said:

• Look girl, come with me to my vineyard

and I will give you grapes and chestnuts.

• A simple poem made for children.

7. A sonnet tells me to do Violante

A sonnet tells me to do Violante

that in my life I have seen myself in so much trouble;

fourteen verses say that it is a sonnet;

mocking, mocking, the three go ahead.

I thought I couldn't find a consonant

and I'm in the middle of another quartet;

but if I see myself in the first triplet,

there is nothing in quartets that scares me.

For the first triplet I am entering,

and it seems that I entered with the right foot,

Well, end with this verse I am giving.

I'm already in the second, and I still suspect

that I am finishing the thirteen verses;

count if there are fourteen, and it is done.

• A fun poem about the meter of the sonnets, which must be 14 verses for them to be like that.

8. Sweet disdain, if the damage you do to me

Sweet disdain, if the damage you do to me

of the luck that you know I thank you,

what will I do if I deserve a good of your rigor,

for only with evil do you satisfy me.

They are not my stubborn hopes

for whom the evils of your good suffer

but the glory of knowing that I offer

capable soul and love of your rigor.

Give me some good, even if you deprive me with it

to suffer for you, because for you I die

if you receive my tears on account of it.

But how will you give me the good I hope for?

if you live so scarcely in giving me evils

that I hardly have how many evils I want!

• Loves that somehow hurt but that we long for with all our soul. Although we wish it to be different and better, but knowing that it will never change.

9. Sonnet

Faint, dare, be furious,

rough, tender, liberal, elusive,

encouraged, deadly, deceased, alive,

loyal, traitorous, cowardly and spirited;

not find outside the good center and rest,

be happy, sad, humble, haughty,

angry, brave, fugitive,

satisfied, offended, suspicious;

flee the face to the clear disappointment,

drink poison by süave liquor,

forget the profit, love the damage;

believe that a heaven fits into a hell,

give life and soul to disappointment;

This is love, whoever tasted it knows it.

• A simple poem that recounts the bitter experiences that one lives in love, since not everything is pink.

10. To a rose

XXXVII

With what divine artifice you go out

of that fine emerald shirt,

oh heavenly Alexandrian rose,

crowned with oriental grains!

Already in rubies you turn on, already in corals,

your color leans to purple

sitting on that pilgrim base

that form five unequal points.

Well be your divine author, because you move

to your contemplation the thought,

to even think about our brief years.

So the green age spreads to the wind,

and so the hopes are light

that have the foundation on earth ...

• Roses are a sample of the beauty of nature and a symbol of the different emotions of people.

11. He does not know what love is who does not love you

Who does not love you does not know what love is,

heavenly beauty, beautiful husband,

your head is gold, and your hair

like the bud that the palm branches.

Your mouth like lily, which spills

liquor at dawn, ivory your neck;

your hand around and in his palm the seal

that the soul calls hyacinths by disguise.

Oh God, what did I think of when, leaving

so much beauty and mortals seeing,

did I lose what I could be enjoying?

But if I take offense from the time I lost,

such a hurry I will give myself, that even time loving

Beat the years I spent pretending

• There are times when we wait too long to express to a person how we feel about them. It is when it is late that we have the impetus to act.

12. Hard need, outrageous mother.

Hard need, shameful mother

of shame and vile daring,

darkness of clear understanding

perhaps in the ingenious dangers;

Famous machine inventor,

pension of the generous birth,

Councilor of Evil, Argos of the Wind

and to the hateful mortal nature;

Vile robber that you go out onto the roads,

pilgrims kill or stop

and to demolish the honor you are worth;

Only one helpful thing you have;

that the man who never tasted evil

it is impossible to know the goods.

• The shortages are difficult to face and generate a lot of pain and anguish. But they also help us to realize our assets.

13. To Don Luis de Góngora

Clear swan of Betis that, sonorous

and grave, you ennobled the instrument

sweeter, than illustrated accent musician,

bathing the golden bow in pure amber,

to you lira, to you the castalio choir

You owe your honor, your fame, and your ornament to him,

unique to the century and exempt from envy,

expired, if not mute, in your decorum.

Those who for your defense write sums,

own ostentations request,

giving your immense sea vile foams.

The icaros defend, who imitate you,

how the feathers bring your sun closer

of your divine light they rush.

• Poem dedicated to a man that Lope de Vega admired.

14. Who kills more rigorously?

Who kills more rigorously?

Love.

Who causes so many sleepless nights?

Jealousy.

Who is the evil of my good?

Disdain

What else than everyone too

a lost hope,

Well, they take my life

love, jealousy and disdain?

What end will my daring have?

Obstinacy.

And what remedy my damage?

Cheated.

Who is contrary to my love?

Fear.

Then rigor is forced,

and insanity to persist,

Well, they can hardly get together

stubbornness, deception and fear.

What has love given me?

Careful.

And what do I ask of you?

I forget.

What do I have of the good that I see?

Wish.

If in such madness I use myself,

that I am my own enemy,

soon they will finish me

care, forgetfulness and desire.

My grief was never said.

Misery.

What does my claim keep?

Chance.

Who makes love resistance?

Absence.

For where will he find patience,

even if I ask death,

if they have to end my life

misery, occasion and absence?

• All things have their good side and their bad side. Life is full of happiness and fear that must be lived, enjoyed and learned.

15. Circe, who transforms me from man to stone.

Circe, who transforms me from man to stone,

wants, or wants the opposite heavens,

that I live absent, without killing myself jealousy,

impossible thing if love is reported.

Both fear and love conform

What was it like to ask the ice for sparks?

be absent and have no misgivings

even in the shadow that thinking forms them.

On the contrary present although daring,

a man may well do resistance,

but not when treacherously another attacks him.

Jealousy for my eyes has come to me,

but from behind the absence,

and what is not seen does not resist.

• Jealousy is the cause of great evils not only in relationships, but also destroys the person who allows himself to be consumed by them.

16. Sing Amaryllis

Sings Amarilis, and his voice raises

my soul from the orb of the moon

to the intelligences, that none

hers so sweetly imitates.

From her number then she transplants me

to unity, which by itself is one,

and as if it were from her choir some of her,

praise her greatness when she sings.

Take me away from the world such a distance,

that the thought of its Maker ends,

hand, dexterity, voice and consonance.

And it is an argument that his divine voice

something has angelic substance,

for to such high contemplation she inclines.

• Amarilis was an anonymous poet from Peru and an admirer of Lope de Vega's works, so she sent him her poets and apparently her admiration was reciprocal.

17. I'm dying of love, I didn't know

I am dying of love, that I did not know,

although skilled in loving things on the ground,

that I did not think that love from heaven

with such rigor souls ignited.

If you call the moral philosophy

desire from beauty to love, suspicion

that with greater anxiety I wake up

how much higher is my beauty.

I loved in the vile land, what a foolish lover!

Oh light of the soul, having to seek you,

what time I wasted as ignorant!

But I promise you now to pay you

with a thousand centuries of love at any moment

that for loving me I stopped loving you.

• There are people who believe that love is only based on carnal passions, until they meet a person who conquers their soul.

18. To the death of Christ our Lord

The afternoon was getting dark

between one and two,

that seeing that the sun dies,

the sun dressed in mourning.

Darkness covers the air,

the stones two by two

they break with each other,

and the man's chest does not.

Angels of peace cry

with such bitter pain,

that the heavens and the earth

they know that God dies.

When Christ is on the cross

saying to the Father, Lord,

Why have you forsaken me?

Oh God, what a tender reason!

What would his mother feel,

when she such a word she heard her,

seeing that her son says

that God forsaken him?

Do not cry pious Virgin,

that although your love is leaving,

before three days pass

will meet you again.

But how the entrails,

that nine months she lived,

they will see that death cuts

fruit of such a blessing?

«Oh Son!, the Virgin says,

What mother did she see she like me

so many bloody swords

pierce his heart?

Where is your beauty?

Who eyes overshadowed,

where you looked at the sky

as of the same Author?

Let's go, sweet Jesus,

the chalice of this passion,

that you drink him of blood,

and I of sorrow and pain.

What good did it do me to keep you

of that King who persecuted you,

if they finally take your life

your enemies today? "

This saying the Virgin

Christ the spirit gave;

soul, if you are not made of stone

cry, because I am the fault.

• A long and moving poem that recounts what may have happened during the death of Christ and the feelings of all those involved.

19. To a comb that the poet did not know

Sulca of the Sea of ​​Love the blonde waves,

Barcelona boat, and for the beautiful

ties sail haughtily, although for them

Maybe you show yourself and maybe you hide

No more arrows, love, golden waves

weaves her splendid hair;

you with your teeth do not remove them

so that you correspond to so much happiness.

Unwraps curls with decorum,

the parallels of my sun unleashes,

boxwood or Moorish elephant tusk;

and while scattered it expands them,

form by the skein paths of gold

before time turns them to silver.

• Things are not eternal and can even be very brief, but they are no less exciting or meaningful when experienced.

20. The Annunciation - Incarnation

There was holy mary

Contemplating the greatness

Of which God would be

Holy mother and beautiful Virgin

The book in the beautiful hand,

That the prophets wrote,

How much do they say about the Virgin

Oh how well you contemplate it!

Mother of God and whole virgin,

Mother of God, divine maiden.

An archangel came down from heaven,

And bowing down to him,

God save you, she told him,

Mary, full of grace.

The Virgin is admired

When to the Yes of your answer

The Word took human flesh,

And the sun came out of the star.

Mother of God and whole virgin,

Mother of God, divine maiden.

• Another of the best known poems of his religious work. This time exposing the event of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

21. Love with such honest thought

Love with such honest thought

burns in my chest, and with such sweet sorrow,

that doing grave honor of the sentence,

to sing it serves as an instrument.

Not the fire, the celestial attentive,

in praise of Amaryllis sounds

with this voice, that the course to the water faces,

move the jungle and fall in love with the wind.

The first light of the first day,

after the sun was born, it all encloses it,

burning circle of its pure fire,

and so too, when your sun was born,

all the beauties of the earth

they sent their light to your beauty.

• When we love, we see in that person an immense beauty that emanates from his being with every gesture he makes.

22. Sing lover bird

Sing lover bird in the bower

jungle to her love, that on the green ground

has not seen the hunter who with care

is listening to you, the armored crossbow.

Throw it, err. Fly, and the disturbed

voice in the peak transformed into yelo,

He returns, and from branch to branch he shortens the flight

for not moving away from the beloved garment.

Such luck love sings in the nest;

more then than jealousy

they shoot arrows of fear of oblivion,

flee, fear, suspect, inquire, jealous,

and until he sees that the hunter is gone,

From thought to thought he flies.

• Between metaphors, this poem tells us about how jealousy makes us lose ourselves in the intrigues, fear and misinterpretations that invade the mind.

23. Andromeda

Tied to the sea Andromeda cried,

the mother-of-pearl opening to the dew,

that in her shells curdled in cold glass,

I bartered into candid pearls.

She kissed the foot, the rocks softened

the sea humble, like a small river,

returning the sun the spring summer,

standing at the zenith of her he gazed at her.

The hair in the boisterous wind,

to cover her with them they begged him,

since witness was of equal said,

and jealous of seeing her beautiful body,

the Nereids requested the end of her,

that there are still those who are envious in misfortunes.

• Envious people do not look beyond what they envy about a person, regardless of their real situation.