33 Short Baroque Poems by Great Authors

4139
Alexander Pearson

The Baroque poems, artistic period of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, are characterized by eccentric, excessive and extravagant style, being also luxurious, ornamental, and ornate. Among the most prominent representatives are Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz or Tirso de Molina.

The term "Baroque movement" is often used to refer to elaborate poetic styles, especially Gongorism, which derives from the work of the Spanish poet Luis de Góngora, and Marinism, which derives from the work of the Italian poet Giambattista Marino. It also encompasses metaphysical poetry in England and scholastic court poetry in Russia..

The forerunners of this style of prose wanted to surprise readers and make them admire their compositions through the use of rhetoric and double meaning, so it was sometimes difficult for them to make themselves understood fully. Baroque prose is often amorphous and full of heavy, didactic scholarship.

List of Baroque poems and their authors

Luis de Góngora: To a rose

Francisco de Quevedo: Defining love

Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Stop Shadow

Daniel Casper von Lohenstein: Song of Thetis

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière): Gallant Stays

Giambattista Marino: The Hand of Schidoni

Torquatto Tasso: The one I have loved the most

Christian Hoffmann von Hofmannswaldau: Description of Perfect Beauty

John Milton: When I think how my light runs out

Andreas Gryphius: Tears of the Fatherland

Tirso de Molina: Triumph of Love

Make square, give entrance,
that is triumphing love
of a deadly battle
in which he has been victorious.

Miguel de Cervantes: Amadía de Gaula to Don Quixote de la Mancha

You, who disdained the crying life

That I had absent and despised about

The great bank of the Peña Pobre,

From merry to reduced penance,

You, to whom the eyes gave the drink

Of abundant liquor, though brackish,

And raising you the silver, of tin and copper,

The earth gave you the food,

Live sure that eternally,

Meanwhile, at least, that in the fourth sphere,

His horses goad the blond Apollo,

You will have clear renown of brave;

Your country will be the first in all;

Your wise author to the one and only world.

Lope de Vega: At Night

Charm-making night,
crazy, imaginative, chimerist,
that you show him who conquers his 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'll pay you with the day,
and if I sleep, I don't feel what I live.

William Shakespeare: Spender of Charm

Spender of charm, why do you spend
in yourself your inheritance of beauty?
Nature lends and does not give away,
and, generous, lend to the generous.

Then, beautiful selfish, why do you abuse
of what was given to you to give?
Miser without profit, why do you use
such a large sum, if you can't live?

By trading like this only with you,
you disappoint yourself to the sweetest.
When they call you to leave, what balance

you can let it be tolerable?
Your unused beauty will go to the grave;
used, it would have been your executor.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca: Life is a dream, Day III, Scene XIX

(Sigismund)

It is true, then: we repress
this fierce condition,
this fury, this ambition,
in case we ever dream.
And yes we will, well we are
in such a singular world,
that living is only dreaming;
and experience teaches me,
that the man who lives, dreams
what it is, until you wake up.

The king dreams that he is king, and he lives
with this deception sending,
arranging and governing;
and this applause, which receives
borrowed, in the wind writes
and turns him to ashes
death (strong misery!):
That there are those who try to reign
seeing that he has to wake up
in the dream of death!

The rich man dreams of his wealth,
what more care offers you;
the poor man who suffers dreams
their misery and poverty;
the one who begins to thrive dreams,
the one who toils and pretends dreams,
dreams the one who offends and offends,
and in the world, in conclusion,
everyone dreams what they are,
although no one understands it.

I dream i'm here,
these prisons loaded;
and I dreamed that in another state
I saw myself more flattering.
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.

Francisco de Quevedo: TO A NOSE

Once upon a man stuck a nose,

once upon a superlative nose,

Once upon a sayón nose and write,

once upon a very bearded swordfish.

Once upon a wrong-faced sundial,

Once upon a thoughtful Altar,

once upon a time there was an elephant face up,

Ovidio Nasón was more narrated.

Once upon a spur of a galley,

once upon a pyramid in egypt,

the twelve tribes of noses was.

Once upon a very infinite nose,

a lot of nose, nose so fierce,

that in the face of Annas it was a crime.

Lope de Vega: Who does not know about love

Who does not know about love lives among beasts;

Who has not wanted well, frightful beasts,

Or if it is Narcissus of himself lover,

Take back in the flattering waters.

Who in the flowers of his first age

He refuses love, he is not a man who is a diamond;

That it can not be the one who is ignorant,

He neither saw their mockery nor feared their truths.

Oh natural love! How good and bad,

In good and in bad I praise you and I condemn you,

And with life and death the same:

You are in a subject, bad and good,

Or good to the one who loves you as a gift,

And bad to the one who loves you for poison.

Luis de Góngora: Song to Córdoba

Oh lofty wall, oh crowned towers

plaque of honor, of majesty, of gallantry!

Oh great river, great king of Andalusia,

of noble sands, since not golden!

Oh fertile plain, oh raised mountain ranges,

that privileges the sky and gilds the day!

Oh always glorious homeland of mine,

as much for feathers as for swords!

If among those ruins and remains

that enriches Genil and Darro bathes

your memory was not my food,

never deserve my absent eyes

see your wall, your towers and your river,

your plain and sierra, oh homeland, oh flower of Spain!

Tirso de Molina: No wonder, love boy

Not for nothing, child love, they paint you blind.

For your effects are blind in vain:

a glove you gave to a barbarian villain,

and you leave me burned in fire.

To have eyes, you will know later

that I am worthy of such a sovereign good,

letting me kiss that hand,

that a farmer won, expensive game!

The lack of your sight hurts me.

Love, because you are blind, put on cravings;

you will see my bad, my unfortunate climate.

Would you give me that glove for spoils,

that the farmer holds him in little esteem;

I will keep you in the apple of my eye.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca: THE GREAT THEATER OF THE WORLD (Fragment)

KING

Do you also so much baldonas

my power, that you go ahead?

So quick of memory

that you were my vassal,

miserable beggar, you erase?

POOR

Your paper is finished,

in the locker room now

from the grave we are the same,

what you were doesn't matter.

RICH

How do you forget that to me

yesterday you asked for alms?

POOR

How do you forget that you

you didn't give it to me?

LOVELINESS

Do you already ignore

the estimate you owe me

for richer and more beautiful?

DISCRETION

In the locker room already

we are all alike,

that in a poor shroud

there is no distinction of people.

RICH

Are you going in front of me,

villain?

LABRADOR

Leave the crazy

ambitions, already dead,

of the sun that you were you are shadow.

RICH

I don't know what cows me

see the Author now.

POOR

Author of heaven and earth,

and your company all,

what made of human life

that short comedy,

to the big dinner, that you

you offered, it comes; run

the curtains of your solio

those candid leaves.

Giambattista Marino: For being with you

What enemies will there be now that in cold marble

do not turn suddenly,

if they look, sir, on your shield

that proud gorgon so cruel,

with hideous hair

turned a mass of vipers

they provoke squalid, and dreadful pomp?

More than! Among weapons advantage

the formidable monster barely provides you:

since the authentic Medusa is your value.

Bernardo De Balbuena: I am lost, Madam, among the people

I am lost, lady, among the people

without you, without me, without being, without God, without life:

without you because you are not served by me,

without me because with you I am not present;

without being because of being being absent

there is nothing that I do not say goodbye to being;

without God because my soul forgets God

for contemplating on you continuously;

lifeless because absent from his soul

no one lives, and if I am no longer deceased

it is in faith of waiting for your coming.

Oh beautiful eyes, precious light and soul,

look at me again, you will return me to the point

to you, to me, to my being, my god, my life!

Vicente Espinel: Octaves

New effects of strange miracle

are born of your courage, and beauty,

some attentive to my serious damage,

others to a brief good that does not last long:

A disappointment results from your courage,

that his unravels at random,

but the countenance gifted and tender

promises glory in the middle of hell.

That beauty that I adore, and for whom I live

Sweet lady! in me it is lucky,

that the most terrible evil, harsh, elusive

into immense glory makes it.

But the severity of the haughty face,

and that rigor equal to that of death

with just the thought, and the memory

promises hell in the midst of this glory.

And this fear that is born so cowardly

of your courage, and my mistrust

the fire freezes, when it burns the most in me,

and the wings bring down hope:

But your beauty arrives flaunting,

banish fear, put trust,

gladdens the soul, and with eternal joy

promises glory in the middle of hell.

Well might, my gallant nymph,

lose your gravity of your right,

and the perpetual rigor that grows in you

leave the white chest for a while:

that although it has your size, and gallantry

full of glory the world, and satisfied,

that rigor, and notorious gravity,

promises hell in the midst of this glory.

I turn my eyes to contemplate, and I look

the harsh rigor with which you treat me,

of fear I tremble, and of pain I sigh

seeing the unreason with which you kill me:

sometimes I burn, sometimes I withdraw,

but all my attempts derail,

that only one I do not know what of the inner chest

promises glory in the middle of hell.

Deny that the appearance of the gentleman

chest, which in my favor always shows,

it doesn't lift me up to more than I'm worth,

and to new glory thought trains,

I will never be able, if of reason I do not leave;

more is my fortune so sinister,

that perverting the end of this victory

promises hell in the midst of this glory.

Vicente Espinel: In the April of my flowery years

In the April of my flowery years,

when the tender hopes gave

of the fruit, which in my chest was rehearsing,

to sing my goods, and my damages,

I'm a human species, and disguised cloths

I was offered an idea, which was flying

with my desire the same, the more I walked,

that I knew my deceptions from afar:

Because, although in the beginning they were the same

my pen, and its worth in competition

Taking each other in high flight,

In a little while my senses saw,

that to its ardor not making resistance

my feather, it burned, and it fell to the ground.

Francois Malherbe: To Du Terrier, gentleman of Aix-En-Provence, on the death of his daughter

Your pain, Du Terrier, will it be eternal,

and the sad ideas

that dictates to your mind the affection of a father

they will never end?

The ruin of your daughter, who has gone down to the grave

for common death,

Will it be a daze that your lost reason

do not lose your foot?

I know of the charms that illustrated his childhood;

don't think i pretend,

infamous Du Terrier, mitigate your heartbreak

lowering its brightness.

More was of this world, than the rare beauty

does not allocate kindness;

and, rose, she has lived what roses live,

the time of a dawn.

And even taking for granted, according to your prayers,

what would I have achieved

with silver hair finish his career,

Would something have changed?

Even entering old woman in the celestial mansion,

Could you improve?

Wouldn't I have suffered from the funeral dust

and seeing me from the grave?

Baltasar Gracián: Sad not to have a friend

Sad thing is not having friends,

but it must be sadder to have no enemies,

because whoever has no enemies, a sign that

He has no: neither talent that overshadows, nor courage that they fear,

nor honor that they murmur to him, nor goods that they covet him,

no good thing that they envy.

Baltasar Gracián: The hero (fragment)

Oh well, educated man, pretender to heroism! Note the most important beauty, notice the most constant dexterity.

Greatness cannot be founded on sin, which is nothing, but on God, who is everything.

If mortal excellence is greed, eternal is ambition.

Being a hero of the world is little or nothing; being from heaven is a lot. To whose great monarch be praise, be honor, be glory.

Miguel de Cervantes: IN PRAISE OF THE ROSE

The one you chose in the garden

the jasmine, it was not discreet,

that does not have a perfect smell

if the jasmine withers.

But the rose until its end,

because even his dying be praised,

has a sweeter, milder smell,

more scent fragrance:

then better is the rose

and the jasmine less süave.

You, what a rose and jasmine you see,

you choose the brief pomp

of jasmine, fragrant snow,

that a breath to the zephyr is;

more knowing later

the haughty beautiful flattery

of the rose, careful

you will put it before your love;

what is jasmine little flower,

a lot of fragrance the rose.

Torquato Tasso: Compare his beloved to the dawn

When the dawn comes out and her face looks

in the mirror of the waves; I feel

the green leaves whisper in the wind;

as in my chest the heart sighs.

I also look for my aurora; and if it turns to me

sweet look, I die of contentment;

I see the knots that in fleeing I am slow

and that they do that the gold is no longer admired.

But to the new sun in the serene sky

does not spill skein so hot

Titón's beautiful jealous friend.

Like shimmering golden hair

that ornaments and crowns the snowy forehead

from the one who stole her rest from my chest.

Gregório de Matos Guerra: The vices 

I am the one who in past years

I sang with my cursing lyre

Brazilian awkwardness, vices and deceptions.

And well that I rested you so long,

I sing again with the same lyre,

the same issue on a different plectrum.

And I feel that it inflames me and inspires me

Talía, who is my guardian angel

since he sent Phoebus to assist me.

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 it is a sonnet,
mockery mocking the three go ahead.
I thought I couldn't find a consonant
and I'm in the middle of another foursome,
more if I see myself in the first triplet,
there is nothing in the quartets that scares me.
for the first triplet I am entering,
and it seems that I entered on the right foot
Well, with this verse I am giving.
I'm already in the second and I still suspect
I'm going through the thirteen verses ending:
count if it's fourteen and it's done.

Author: Lope de Vega.

They tell of a wise man that one day: a fragment of The life is dream

They tell of a wise man that one day
I was so poor and miserable,
that only sustained
of some herbs that I used.
Will there be another, among themselves he said,
poorer and sadder than me ?;
and when the face came back
found the answer, seeing
that another wise man was taking
the herbs he threw.

Complaining about my fortune
I lived in this world,
and when I said between myself:
Will there be another person
luckily more importunate?
Pious you have answered me.
Well, coming back to my senses,
I find that my sorrows,
to make them happy,
you would have picked them up.

Author: Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

I saw the face of my late wife. Sonnet XXIII

I saw the face of my late wife,
returned, like Alceste, from death,
with which Hercules increased my luck,
livid and rescued from the pit.

Mine, unscathed, clean, splendid,
pure and saved by the law so strong,
and I contemplate her beautiful inert body
like the one in heaven where he rests.

In white she came to me all dressed,
covered his face, and managed to show me
that in love and goodness shone.

How much shine, reflection of his life!
But alas! who leaned down to hug me
and I woke up and saw the day come back at night.

Author: John Milton.

Baroque poetry and its characteristics

Baroque poetry is characterized by:

  • The use of complex metaphors based on the concept or principle of ingenuity, which requires unexpected combinations of ideas, images and distant representations. The metaphor used by the Baroque poets disregards the obvious similarities.
  • Interest in religious and mystical themes, trying to find a spiritual meaning to the everyday and physical world. The baroque poets of the 17th century saw their work as a kind of meditation, bringing thought and feeling together in their verses. Some jobs were darker, viewing the world as a place of suffering and exploring spiritual torment..
  • The use of satire to criticize politicians and the aristocracy. Baroque prose challenges conventional ideologies and reveals the changing naturalization of society and its values.
  • The bold use of language. He is not afraid of language experiments. Baroque poetry is known for its flamboyance and dramatic intensity. Has a tendency towards darkness and fragmentation.

Other poems of interest

Poems of Romanticism.

Avant-garde poems.

Renaissance poems.

Poems of Futurism.

Classicism Poems.

Poems of Neoclassicism.

Baroque Poems.

Poems of Modernism.

Dada poems.

Cubist Poems.

References

  1. A Poet's Glossary: ​​Baroque and the Plain Style by Edward Hirsch. Recovered from: blog.bestamericanpoetry.com.
  2. Recovered from: encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com.
  3. Bloom, H. (2005). Poets and Poems. Baltimore, Chelsea House Publishers.
  4. Gillespie, G. (1971). German Baroque Poetry. New York, Twayne Publishers Inc.
  5. Hirsch, E. (2017). The Essential Poet's Glossary. New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
  6. Rivers, E. (1996). Renaissance and Baroque Poetry of Spain. Illinois, Waveland Press Inc.

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